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BY 

L. P. MERCER 



GLOBE LIBRARY. Vol. II, No. 295, Aug. 29, 1898. Bi- Weekly. Year, $7.00. 
Entered at Chicago Post Office as Second-Class Matter. 



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Sons and Fatl 



BY HARRY STILLWELL EDWARDS. 

The Story that won the $10,000 Pi 
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CHICAGO AND NEW YORK. 




WORLD'S RELIGIOUS CONGRESSES, 




REV. L. P. MERCER, 

Neio- Church Temple, Chicago. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



IN A NUTSHELL 



A Religious Symposium Representing 

Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, 

Judaism, Mohammedanism, 

The Brahmo-Somaj, 

and Woman 



BY 

REV. L. P. MERCER. 



Chicago : 
RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY, 

PUBLISHERS. 



~3Lzi 



Copyright, 1893, by Rand, McNally & Co. 
Copyright, 1898, by Rand, McNally & Co. 



139^^5^ of. ^\ 







CONTENTS 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. Initiament and Preparation, - 7 

II. Opening Spectacle and Speeches, - - 17 

President Bonney, - 20 

Eev. John Henry Barrows, D. D., - 24 

Cardinal Gibbons, - - 30 

Archbishop Latus, - - - - 31 

P. C. Mozoomdar, - - 32 

Pnng Quang Yu, - - - - - 35 

Rt.-Rev. Reuchi Shibata, - - 36 

H. Dharmapala, - - - - - - 37 

Virchand Gandhi, - 39 

C. ST. Chakravarti, - - 40 

Swami Vivekananda, - - 44 

Miss Jeanne Sorabji, - - - - - 46 

Prince Wolkonsky, -* . - - - - 49 

III. A Religious Symposium, - - - - 53 

The Hindu, .--••_ 54 

Orthodox Christianity. - ^H - 64 

Liberal Christianity, - - - 82 
Buddhism, ------- 86 

Judaism, ------- 104 

Mohammedanism, - - 112 

Roman Catholic Church, - - 117 

The Greek Church, - - 125 

Japanese Criticism and Appeal, - 130 
The Brahmo-Somaj, ----- 137 

The New Christianity, - - - 147 
(5) 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

IV. A Keligious Symposium — Continued, -156 

God, - - 156 

Incarnation, ------- 187 

Sin and Keconciliation, - r - 199 

Revelation and the Scriptures, - - - 222 

Immortality, 246 

Sociology, 261 

Woman, - 282 

V. The Denominational Congresses, - - 289 
VI. Farewell Meetings in Columbus and 

Washington Halls, ----- 293 
VII. What Will Be the Kesult? - - - 325 



THE 

WORLD'S RELIGIOUS CONGRESSES 

OF 1893. 



CHAPTER I. 

INITlAMENT AND PREPARATION. 

"TTTHEN" the 'record of the achievements of the 
VV World's Columbian Exposition shall have 
been fully written and considered by those 
far enough removed from the event to form impar- 
tial judgments, it will be found that the most 
remarkable and unique in kind and substantial in 
results are those of the Auxiliary Congresses, cover- 
ing more than twenty departments of thought, and 
embracing over two hundred distinct congresses, 
participated in by distinguished specialists. As the 
accomplished and efficient secretary of the World's 
Congress Auxiliary said in summing up the work: 
' ' Never before in the history of the world has 
there been a programme of subjects and speakers 
prepared, the proper execution of which required 
the term of six months. Never has there been 
created an organization with 210 working commit- 
tees, a local membership of 1,600, and a non-resi- 

(7) 



8 

dent membership of 15,000. Never until the year 
1893, which marks a new epoch in the intellectual 
progress of mankind, has any individual gone so 
far as to outline even the prospectus of a course of 
lectures that covered the great departments of 
thought, as outlined by the president of these con- 
gresses in his general programme. These com 
gresses have held 1,245 sessions; we have had 
5,974 speakers, and the total attendance at all the 
congresses is over three-quarters of a million. It 
was a gigantic undertaking, but it has been success- 
fully accomplished." 

The original idea of the world's congresses was 
first published by Hon. C. C. Bonney in the States- 
man magazine for October, 1889, in these words: 

"The crowning glory of the World's Fair of 1893 
should not be the exhibit there to be made of the 
material triumphs, industrial achievements, and 
mechanical victories of man, however magnificent 
that display may be. Something higher and nobler 
is demanded by the progressive spirit of the present 
age. In connection with that important event of 
the world all government, jurisprudence, finance, 
science, literature, education, and religion should 
be represented in a congress of statesmen, jurists, 
financiers, scientists, literati, teachers, and theolo- 
gians, greater in numbers and more widely repre- 
sentative of all peoples and nations and tongues 
than any assemblage which has ever yet been con- 
vened." 

The idea was extensively discussed, and received 
with much public favor. Subsequently the matter 



IHTTIAMENT AND PREPARATION. 9 

was taken up by the Directory of the Columbian 
Exposition, and under its authority the World's 
Congress Auxiliary was organized, with C. C. 
Bonney as president, T. B. Bryan, vice-president, 
Lyman J. Gage as treasurer, and received the 
indorsement of the United States Government. 
The work of organization commenced in October, 
1889, was completed and the first of the congresses 
opened in May, 1893. The last congress embraced 
in the great scheme was held during the last week 
in October ; and the president in summing up 
results could say: "That these congresses have 
been successful far beyond anticipation, that they 
have transformed into enduring reality the hopes 
of those who organized and conducted them, and 
that they will exercise a benign and potent influ- 
ence on the welfare of mankind through the coming 
centuries has been so often, so emphatically, and 
so eloquently declared by eminent representatives 
of the different countries and peoples that these 
statements may be accepted as established facts. 
That the material exhibit of the World' s Columbian 
Exposition in Jackson Park is the most complete 
and magnificent ever presented to human view is 
generally agreed, but a multitude of eminent wit- 
nesses have declared, after attendance on both, that 
the intellectual and moral exposition of the prog- 
ress of mankind presented in the world's con- 
gresses of 1893 is greater and more imposing still. 
Thus the work of the World's Congress Auxiliary 
takes its enduring place in human history, an 
imperishable part of the progress of mankind." 



10 world's religious congresses. 

In the whole series of congresses the ''Parlia- 
ment of Religions" has taken preeminence, and 
justly so, not only because of the importance and 
universal interest of the subject, but because it was 
central in the original conception and its success 
the constant care of the president of the Auxiliary. 
In his closing address to the Parliament of Religions 
Mr. Bonney said: " The wonderful success of this 
first actual congress of the religions of the world is 
the realization of a conviction which has held my 
heart for many years. I became acquainted with 
the great religious systems of the world in my youth, 
and have enjoyed an intimate association with 
leaders of many churches during my maturer years. 
I was thus led to believe that if the great religious 
faiths could be brought into relations of friendly 
intercourse many points of sympathy and union 
would be found, and the coming unity of mankind 
in the love of God and the service of man be greatly 
facilitated and advanced. Hence, when the occasion 
arose it was gladly welcomed, and the effort more 
than willingly made." 

It was in this faith, and in the hope of realizing 
this result, that the "fraternity of learning and 
virtue " was conceived, and the idea of the congresses 
proposed. In conversations with the writer, in the 
spiritual intimacy of years, the desirability and 
feasibility of such a universal conference wa's often 
dwelt upon, on the ground of our common faith, 
that a universal medium of salvation has been pro- 
vided by the Lord with every nation that has a 
religion, and that to bring into friendly conference 



INITIAMENT AND PREPARATION. 11 

the representatives of all the great historic faiths 
and of the denominations of Christendom would 
develop the fact that to acknowledge the divine and 
live well is the supreme and universal condition of 
religion, and would lead to the recognition of a 
universal bond of brotherhood in faithfulness to 
what one understands to be from the divine and 
to lead, to the divine. 

When a meeting of ministers, representing all the 
denominations in Chicago, was called in September, 
1889, to aid in the creation of an interest in the 
great Exposition and its location in Chicago, this 
idea of a great religious congress and of other 
international conventions was communicated by 
myself and others, to whom it had become familiar; 
and in a sub-committee, consisting of Bishop Fal- 
lows, Dr. George C. Lorimer, Dr. Hiram W. Thomas, 
Rev. Jenkin L. Jones, and the writer of this review, 
the subject was fully discussed, adopted, and 
embodied in an address, which was signed by the 
whole committee of ministers, and given to the 
press October 1, 1889. In these meetings of the 
representatives of the Chicago churches, while the 
general plan of "international conventions com- 
posed of the scholars and thinkers and workers of 
all countries" was adopted, the dream of a friendly 
conference of all religions was perhaps by most 
regarded as Utopian, and except for the earnest and 
sanguine advocacy of a few bold spirits would 
scarcely have received the indorsement of that 
body. It was said that religions had never met but 
in conflict, and that a different result could not be 



12 world's religious congresses. 

expected now. It may be assuredly said that but 
for the high faith, catholicity of spirit, great tact 
and patience, and the sublime persistence of the 
president of the Auxiliary, who dreamed only of 
success, under the guidance of Providence, the 
result which has now become history could never 
have been realized; and his "patient and titanic 
labors," as Doctor Barrows said at the opening of 
the parliament, ' ' will one day be appreciated at 
their full value." 

Immediately upon the organization of the Auxili- 
ary the president appointed as General Committee 
on Religious Congresses Rev. John Henry Barrows, 
D. D., chairman; Rt.-Rev. Bishop William E. 
McLaren, D. D., D. C. L., Rev. Prof. David Swing, 
vice-chairmen; His Grace Archbishop P. A. Feehan, 
Rev. F. A. Noble, D. D., Rev. William M. Law- 
rence, D. D., Rev. F. M. Bristol, D. D., Rabbi E.G. 
Hirsch, Rev. A. J. Canfield, D. D., Rev. M. Ranseen, 
Rev. J. Berger, Mr. J. W. Plummer, Rev. J. Z. 
Torgersen, Rev. L. P. Mercer, Rev. Jenkin Lloyd 
Jones, Rt -Rev. Bishop C. E. Cheney, D. D. The 
result is an imperishable monument to the zeal and 
efficiency of the chairman and cooperating members 
of this committee. Doctor Barrows entered with 
enthusiasm into the scheme, and brought his great 
abilities to the support of a faith in the world's 
response. The preliminary address of the commit- 
tee, prepared by him and sent throughout the world, 
elicited the most gratifying responses, and proved 
that the proposed congress was not only practicable, 
but also that it was most earnestly demanded by the 



INITIAMENT AND PREPARATION. 13 

needs of the present age. The religious leaders of 
many lands, hungering and thirsting for a larger 
righteousness, gave the proposal their benedictions, 
and promised the congress their active cooperation 
and support. 

Opposition was encountered in many quarters, 
and not a few well-known Christian writers con- 
demned what they called an attempt to congregate 
"the exponents and propagandists of all false and 
corrupt religions, on equal terms with the advocates 
of the Christian religion, for a competitive compari- 
son of the merits of these beliefs." It was manifest 
from the outset, however, that the great popular sym- 
pathy of Christendom was with the movement, and 
that these narrow misconceptions were confined to a 
small, if zealous, minority. The position of Dr. 
John Henry Barrows as chairman of the General 
Committee, through the long period of strenuous toil 
which brought the preparations to completion, was 
not an enviable one. While his committee worked 
together in unbroken harmony, the burden of 
responsibility, and the correspondence necessary to 
any promise of success, and the executive energy 
and tact inevitable to the arrangement of so vast 
and varied a programme, fell upon him. At the 
same time, standing as the rex^resentative of an 
orthodox church which withheld its support from 
the movement, he became the target of bigoted 
criticism which must have often strained friendships 
and sometimes made his position little less than 
heroic. On the other hand, he received the benedic- 
tions and the generous cooperation of some of the 



14 world's religious congresses. 

foremost minds of Christendom, and the loyal assist- 
ance of the Woman's Committee and of the many 
local denominational committees, with their advis- 
ory councils, advanced the interest throughout the 
world. 

The plan extended as the preparations advanced, 
and the programme itself of the religious congresses 
of 1893 constitutes what was with perfect propriety 
designated as one of the most remarkable publica- 
tions of the century. The programme of this gen- 
eral parliament of religions directly represented 
England, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, France, 
Germany, Russia, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Syria, 
India, Japan, China, Ceylon, New Zealand, Brazil, 
Canada, and the American States, and indirectly 
included many other countries. It presented , among 
other great themes to be considered in this congress, 
Theism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, 
Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Zoro- 
astrianism, Catholicism, the Greek church, Protest- 
antism in many forms, and other religious systems. 

This programme also announced for presentation 
the great subjects of revelation, immortality, the 
incarnation of God, the universal elements in 
religion, the ethical unity of different religious sys- 
tems, the relations of religion to morals, marriage, 
education, science, philosophy, evolution, music, 
labor, government, peace and war, and many other 
themes of absorbing interest. The distinguished 
leaders of human progress by whom these great 
topics were presented- constitute an unparalleled 
galaxy of eminent names. For the execution of this 



INITIAMENT AND PREPARATION. 15 

part of the general programme seventeen days were 
assigned. During substantially the same period 
the second part of the programme was executed in 
the adjoining Hall of Washington. This consisted 
of what are termed presentations of their distinctive 
faith and achievements by the different churches. 
These presentations were made to the world, as rep- 
resented in the world's religious congresses of 1893. 

The third part of the general programme for the 
congresses of this department consisted of separate 
and independent congresses of the different religious 
aenomi nations, for the purpose of more fully setting 
forth their doctrines and the service they have ren- 
dered to mankind. These special congresses were 
held, for the most part, in the smaller halls of the 
memorial building. The denominational congresses 
were each held during the week in which the presen- 
tation of the denomination occurred. 

The fourth and final part of the programme of the 
department of religion consisted of congresses of 
various kindred organizations, held between the 
close of the Parliament of Religions and October 15th, 
including Missions, Ethics, Sunday rest, the Evan- 
gelical Alliance, and similar associations. 

Well might President Bonney in opening the par- 
liament, contemplating with satisfaction and pride 
the event he had conceived with such daring, devel- 
oped with so much labor to such elaborate complete- 
ness by the committees which he had called to his 
aid and intrusted with the responsibility, exclaim: 
' ' To this more than imperial feast I bid you wel- 



16 world's religious congresses. 

The great assembly has been held, the possibility 
of conference and fraternal respect demonstrated, 
the great deliverances made; and now the work of 
study, comparison, and honest criticism may begin. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE OPENING SPECTACLE AND SPEECHES. 

AN unfinished art palace converted into recep- 
tion chambers and assembly halls for a 
world's congress; eager and hospitable ladies 
offering cordial greetings and words of direction to 
the crowds who inquire for the Hall of Columbus, 
or seek to register as members of the Parliament of 
Religions; distinguished committeemen greeting 
and guiding, now a Roman Catholic cardinal, and 
now a stately Hindu in orange robe and turban, 
and again a group of Japanese Buddhist monks, to 
the ^president's reception-room, where they are wel- 
comed by a Christian layman as the recognized 
official of a Christian nation, and by a Presbyterian 
clergyman as chairman of the occasion, and intro- 
duced to an archbishop of the Greek church in his 
high black cap, the black gown and jeweled orna- 
ments of his order; everywhere Christians of many 
denominations are acting as hosts, welcoming distin- 
guished visitors from China, Japan, India, Russia, 
Sweden, Germany, England, Australia, New 
Zealand, and introducing them to one another as 
brothers, worshiping the one only God, having a com- 
mon goal ! Surely the world moves. We have been 
boasting of a new age, an age of inquiry, expecta- 
tion, and experiment. It is evident we have 

2 (17) 



18 woeld's keligious congresses. 

reached, also, a new era of fraternity and good-will, 
and that the ' ' Fatherhood of God and the brother- 
hood of man" is to have henceforth a real interpre- 
tation among men 

Gorgeous and imposing spectacles have been wit- 
nessed in every land, but nothing which inspires 
the heart and fires the imagination like this double 
file of the representatives of all religions headed by 
a Christian layman and a Presbyterian minister. 
The audience which filled Columbus Hall to its 
utmost capacity is deeply moved, and many who 
walk in the procession, who have had their hours of 
hope and hours of grave misgiving, are almost 
overpowered with a sense of the possible significance 
of the occasion. All know that at the hour of 10, 
on this 11th day of September, the new Liberty 
Bell struck ten strokes in honor of the ten great 
religions of the world, and many believed the bell 
proclaimed "a new liberty of thought and wider 
tolerance of opinion," and some devoutly pray 
as the procession moves to the platform for the 
Spirit that shall make them worthy links in a uni- 
versal bond of brotherhood in God. But how shall 
these differences harmonize \ If there is a common 
spirit of worship, how shall it find a common 
expression % 

This is the first revelation of the memorable 
morning. Calling the assembly to its feet, Presi- 
dent Bonney announces a brief moment of silent 
prayer, each offering the aspiration of his heart in 
the language of his thought; after which the whole 
multitude, Christian, Jew, and Gentile, led by Car- 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 19 

dinal Gi'bbons, joined in the universal prayer 
"Our Father," and burst forth, with the organ's 
lead, into the doxology, ' ' Praise God, from whom 
all blessings flow." In impressiveness and preg- 
nant promise the occasion could not well be sur- 
passed. 

But how is this beginning to end \ We know it 
ended well. "The Fatherhood of God and 
brotherhood of man" proved not only a watch- 
word, but a sentiment impressive, respectful, and 
genuine. Vague and various the ideas of the sig- 
nificance of the phrase may have been with many, 
I am disposed to say with most, yet almost every 
speaker at the opening session expressed in some 
form what alone could give it reality of meaning. 
I asked myself, Why are these my brothers? 
Because they are scholars? Not that. Scholars 
fchere are from Christendom, and their peers in 
scholarship from the far-off East, on this platform, 
and the recognition of a common bond in knowl- 
edge of the history of opinion and in trained 
methods of study. But this alone would lead to 
debate and contest of opinion among intellectual 
peers. Something must hold this in check, and 
overshadow it in the recognition of a spiritual 
relationship, if our hopes are to be realized. Are 
these brothers because they are men? I asked. 
That fact will not bring the result hoped for unless 
there is a common sense of true manhood. And 
what should that be except the recognition of true 
humanity in a man's faithfulness to what he 
believes to be divine in the hope of union with the 



20 world's religious congresses. 

All Good. Just that, I thought, expresses the 
universal bond of brotherhood in God. This man 
is my brother because he loves and lives up to what 
he believes to be from the divine, and in the hope 
of union with the divine. That in him is brother 
to that in me which seeks obedience to the divine. 
Diverse our readings of the divine may be, but 
faithfulness to wdiat I read I know to be my highest 
and truly human quality, and because I recognize 
this faithfulness in another, also, I know him to be 
my brother. So I thought, and felt assured that if 
this sense of brotherhood were in the assembly, 
uttered or unexpressed, it would make itself felt. 

Looking back now over the speeches of welcome 
and response on that opening day, I am profoundly 
impressed with the fact that this very recognition 
made the Parliament of Religions the inauguration 
of a new impulse among men. 

"Worshipers of God and lovers of men," were 
the felicitous words in which President Bonney 
opened his inaugural. 

"Let us rejoice," he continued, "that we have 
lived to see this glorious day; let us give thanks to 
the Eternal God, whose mercy endureth forever, that 
we are permitted to take part in the solemn and 
majestic event of a world's congress of religions. 
The importance of this event can not be overes- 
timated. Its influence on the future relations of 
the various races of men can not be too highly 
esteemed. 

' ' If this congress shall faithfully execute the duties 
with which it has been charged it will become a joy 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 21 

of the whole earth and stand in Imman history like 
a new Monnt Zion, crowned with glory and mark- 
ing the actnal beginning of the new epoch of 
brotherhood and peace. 

"For when the religious faiths of the world rec- 
ognize each other as brothers, children of one 
Father, whom all profess to love and serve, then, 
and not till then, will the nations of the earth yield 
to the spirit of concord and learn war no more. 

" It is inspiring to think that in every part of the 
world many of the worthiest of mankind, who would 
gladly join us here if that were in their power, this 
day lift their hearts to the Supreme Being in earnest 
prayer for the harmony and success of this congress. 
To them our own hearts speak in love and sym- 
pathy in this impressive and prophetic scene. 

"In this congress the word 'religion' means the 
love and worship of God and the love and service of 
man. We believe the Scripture, that ' of a truth God 
is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that 
feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted 
of him.' We come together in mutual confidence 
and respect, without the least surrender or compro- 
mise of anything which we respectively believe to be 
truth or duty, with the hope that mutual acquaint- 
ance and a free and sincere interchange of views on 
the great questions of eternal life and human con- 
duct will be mutually beneficial. 

"As the finite can never fully comprehend the 
infinite, nor perfectly express its own view of the 
divine, it necessarily follows that individual opin- 
ions of the divine nature and attributes will differ. 



22 

But, properly understood, these varieties of view 
are not causes of discord and strife, but rather in- 
centives to deeper interest and examination. Nec- 
essarily God reveals himself differently to a child 
than to a man; to a philosopher than to one who 
can not read. Each must see God with the eyes of 
his own soul; each must behold him through the 
colored glass of his own nature; each one must 
receive him according to his own capacity of recep- 
tion. The fraternal union of the religions of the 
world will come when each seeks truly to know how 
God has revealed himself in the other, and remem- 
bers the inexorable law that with what judgment it 
judges it shall itself be judged. 

"The religious faiths of the world have most 
seriously misunderstood and misjudged each other 
from the use of words in meanings radically differ- 
ent from those which they were intended to bear, 
and from a disregard of the distinctions between 
appearances and facts; between signs and symbols 
and the things signified and represented. Such 
errors it is hoped that this congress will do much to 
correct and to render hereafter impossible. 

"He who believes that God has revealed himself 
more fully in his religion than in any other can not 
do otherwise than desire to bring that religion to 
the knowledge of all men, with an abiding con- 
viction that the God who gave it will preserve, pro- 
tect, and advance it in every expedient way ; and 
hence he will welcome every just opportunity to 
come into fraternal relations with men of other 
creeds, that they may see in his upright life the 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 23 

evidence of the truth and beauty of his faith, and 
be thereby led to learn it, and be helped heavenward 
by it. When it pleased Gfod to give me the idea of 
the world' s congresses of 1893, there came with that 
idea a profound conviction that their crowning 
glory should be a fraternal conference of the world's 
religions. Accordingly, the original announcement 
of the world' s congress scheme, which was sent by 
the Government of the United States to all other 
nations, contained, among other great themes to be 
considered, ' The grounds for fraternal union in the 
religions of different people.' " 

Concluding, Mr. Bonney said: ' ' This day the sun 
of a new era of religious peace and progress rises 
over the world, dispelling the dark clouds of secta- 
rian strife. This day a new flower blooms in the 
gardens of religious thought, filling the air with its 
exquisite -perfume. This day a new fraternity is 
born into the world of human progress, to aid in 
the upbuilding of the kingdom of God in the hearts 
of men. Era and flower and fraternity bear one 
name. It is a name which will gladden the hearts 
of those who worship God and love man in every 
clime. Those who hear its music joyfully echo it 
back to sun and flower. 

" It is the brotherhood of religions. 

4 ' In this name I welcome the first parliament of the 
religions of the world." 

This auspicious opening was received with an 
enthusiasm which was augmented and deepened 
when Doctor Barrows followed with his eloquent 
and catholic address. If the full significance of the 



24 world's religious congresses. 

occasion is to be measured, the circumstances must 
be frankly considered. Doctor Barrows was not 
merely the chairman of the Parliament of Religions; 
he was such as the representative of one of the 
denominations of Christendom. While his utter- 
ances were, of course, in no way intended to com- 
mit his denomination, they are to be considered as 
showing what a man in his position is free to say on 
an occasion in which not so very long ago he would 
not have been free to participate. While for con- 
scientious boldness, as the utterance of a man who 
had been subjected to annoying sectarian criticism 
from many quarters, his words are admirable, they 
set a model of dignity and devout reliance upon the 
justifying providence of God that must silence 
opposition, quiet distrust, and stimulate generous 
impulses. 

"If my heart did not overflow," he said, "with 
cordial welcome at this hour, which promises to be 
a great moment in history, it would be because I 
had lost the spirit of manhood and had been for- 
saken by the Spirit of God. The whitest snow on 
the sacred mount of Japan, the clearest water 
springing from the sacred fountains of India, are 
not more pure and bright than the joy of my heart 
and of many hearts here that this day has dawned 
in the annals of time, and that, from the farthest 
isles of Asia; from India, mother of religions; from 
Europe, the great teacher of civilization; from the 
shores on which breaks the 'long wash of Austral- 
asian seas'; that from neighboring lands and from 
all parts of this republic, which we love to co litem- 



OPENING ADDBESSES. 25 

plate as the land of earth's brightest future, you 
have come here at our invitation in the expectation 
that the world's first parliament of religions must 
prove an event of race-wide and perpetual signifi- 
cance. 

' ' For more than two years the General Committee, 
which I have the honor to represent, working 
together in unbroken harmony, and presenting the 
picture of prophecy of a united Christendom, have 
carried their arduous and sometimes appalling task 
in happy anticipation of this golden hour. Your 
coming has constantly been in our thoughts, and 
hopes, and fervent prayers. I rejoice that your 
long voyages and journeys are over, and that here, 
in this young capital of our Western civilization, 
you find men eager for truth, sympathetic with the 
spirit of universal human brotherhood, and loyal, I 
believe, to the highest they know, glad and grate- 
ful to Almighty God that they see your faces and 
are to hear your words. 

"Welcome, most welcome, O wise men of the East 
and of the West! May the star which has led you 
hither be like unto that luminary which guided the 
men of old, and may this meeting by the inland 
sea of a new continent be blessed of heaven to the 
redemption of men from error and from sin and 
despair. I wish you to understand that this great 
undertaking, which has aimed to house under one 
friendly roof in brotherly counsel the representa- 
tives of God's aspiring and believing children every- 
where, has been conceived and carried on through 
strenuous and patient toil, with an unfaltering 



26 

heart, with a devout faith in God, and with most 
signal and special evidences of his divine guidance 
and favor. 

"Long ago I shonld have surrendered the task 
intrusted to me before the colossal difficulties loom- 
ing ever in the way, had I not committed my work 
to the gracious care of that God who loves all his 
children, whose thoughts are long, long thoughts, 
who is patient and merciful as well as just, and 
who cares infinitely more for the souls of his erring 
children than for any creed or philosophy of human 
devising. If anything great and worthy is to be 
the outcome of this parliament, the glory is wholly 
due to him who inspired it, and who in the Script- 
ures, which most of us cherish as the word of God, 
has taught the blessed truths of divine fatherhood 
and human brotherhood. 

"I should not use the word 'if in speaking of 
the outcome of this congress of religions, since, were 
it decreed that our sessions should end this day, the 
truthful historian would say that the idea which 
has inspired and led this movement, the idea whose 
beauty and force have drawn you through these 
many thousand miles of travel, that this idea has 
been so Hashed before the eyes of men that they 
will not forget it, and that our meeting this morn- 
ing has become a new, great fact in the historic evo- 
lution of the race which will not be obliterated. 

"What, it seems to me, should have blunted 
some of the arrows of criticism shot at the pro- 
moters of this movement is this other fact, that it 
is the representatives of that Christian faith which 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 27 

we believe lias in it such elements and divine forces 
that it is fitted to the needs of all men who have 
planned and provided this first school of compara- 
tive religions, wherein devout men of all faiths may 
speak for themselves without hindrance, without 
criticism, and without compromise, and tell what 
they believe and why they believe it. I appeal to 
the representatives of the non-Christian faiths, and 
ask you if Christianity suffers in your eyes from 
having called this Parliament of Religions? Do you 
believe that its beneficent work in the world will 
be one whit lessened?" 

"We are met together to-day," he continued, 
"as men, children of one God, sharers with all men 
in weakness, and guilt, and need, sharers with de- 
vout souls everywhere in aspiration, and hope, and 
longing. We are met as religious men, believing, 
even here in this capital of material wonders, in the 
presence of an exposition which displays the un- 
paralleled marvels of steam and electricity, that 
there is a spiritual root to all human progress. We 
are met in a school of comparative theology, which 
I hope will prove more spiritual and ethical than 
theological. We are met, I believe, in the temper 
of love, determined to bury, at least for the time, 
our sharp hostilities, anxious to find out wherein we 
agree, eager to learn what constitutes the strength of 
other faiths and the weakness of our own; and we 
are met as conscientious and truth-seeking men in a 
council where no one is asked to surrender or abate 
his individual convictions, and where, I will add, no 
one would be worthy of a place if he did. 



28 

' ' We are met in a great conference, men and women 
of different minds, where the speaker will not be 
ambitious for short-lived verbal victories over 
others; where gentleness, courtesy, wisdom, and 
moderation will prevail far more than heated argu- 
mentation. I am confident that you appreciate the 
peculiar limitations which constitute the peculiar 
glory of this assembly. We are not here as Baptists 
and Buddhists, Catholics and Confucians, Parsees 
and Presbyterians, Methodists and Moslems. We 
are here as members of a parliament of religions, 
over which flies no sectarian flag, which is to be 
stampeded by no sectarian w T ar-cries, but where for 
the first time in a large council is lifted up the ban- 
ner of love, fellowship, brotherhood. We all feel 
that there is a spirit which should always pervade 
these meetings, and if any one should offend against 
this spirit let him not be rebuked publicly or per- 
sonally. Your silence will be a graver and severer 
rebuke. 

u We are not here to criticise one another, but each 
to speak out positively and frankly his own con- 
victions regarding his own faith. The great world 
outside will review our work; the next century will 
review it. It is our high and noble business to make 
that work the best possible." 

With earnest acknowledgment of the coopera- 
tion of men and women at home and abroad who 
had rendered assistance, with words of welcome to 
the representatives in their several orders, and with 
recognition of spiritual conditions and causes in the 
spirits of just and good men passed from earth, and 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 29 

forming "a great company of witnesses," Doctor 
Barrows concluded in these words: 

" When, a few days ago, I met for the first time 
the delegates who have come to ns from Japan, and 
shortly after the delegates who have come to us from 
•India, I felt that the arms of human brotherhood 
had reached almost around the globe. But there is 
something stronger than human love and fellowship, 
and what gives us the most hope and happiness 
to-day is our confidence that — 

The whole round world is every way 

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 

The key-note had been sounded, and the audience 
recognized it with sympathetic enthusiasm when- 
ever it was approached in the varied addresses of 
the day. Whether it was the generosity of good- 
will, or appreciation of the novelty of high official 
representatives of the Roman church pleading 
for " religious liberty," Archbishop Feehan and 
Cardinal Gibbons were received with especial 
interest. Perhaps it was not yet known to most 
that Bishop Keane, the eminent rector of the Cath- 
olic University at Washington, had taken a cor- 
dial and active part in the preliminary work, 
and that Catholics had shown from the outset a 
worthy interest in the parliament; but, whether from 
surprise or from expectation, the audience was 
eager to welcome the cardinal and archbishop. 
Their speeches were scarcely equal in dignity and 
catholicity to the addresses contributed by repre- 
sentatives of the Catholic church later in the ses- 



30 world's religious congresses. 

sions, and betrayed some restraint, as if unwilling 
too far to commit themselves. Archbishop Feehan 
noted " great diversities of opinion, but in all a 
great, high motive." Cardinal Gibbons that, not- 
withstanding diversities of belief, there is a "plat- 
form of charity, of humanity, and of benevolence" 
on which all may stand. Later in the day, Arch- 
bishop Redwood of New Zealand raised the open- 
ing voice of the Catholic church to a higher strain 
of faith, saying: "In her teaching there is an 
event which the human race shall never forget — 
that the Godhead took up our human nature to ele- 
vate and unite it with the divine nature, whence 
began a brotherhood of man never dreamed of by 
merely human beings." And pointing out that in 
all religions there must be an element of truth to 
account for their persistence, he recalled the saying 
of Christ, "I am the truth," and exclaimed, 
"Wherever there is truth there is something worthy 
the respect, not only of man, but of God, the God- 
man, the incarnate God." 

When the Archbishop of Zante, Greece, the Most 
Reverend Dionysios Latus, was introduced, and 
arose with the dignity of manly strength, of great 
learning, of ripened age, and the bearing of official 
responsibility, curiosity gave place to profound re- 
spect before he had uttered a word. It was an object 
lesson — not so much in the power of presence as in 
the sphere of power. Through a certain labored 
ceremonial of manner there breathed a directness of 
purpose and intensity of feeling that made itself 
appreciated before he had articulated his thought: 



I 




C. C. BONNEY. 

President of the World's Congress Auxiliary. 



OPENING ADDKESSES. 31 

" Reverend ministers, most honorable gentle- 
men, the superiors of this congress, and hon- 
orable ladies and gentlemen: I consider myself 
very happy in having set my feet on this plat- 
form to take part in the congress of the different 
nations and peoples. I thank the great American 
nation, and especially the superiors of this congress, 
for the high manner in which they have honored me 
by inviting me to take part, and I thank the minis- 
ters of divinity of the different nations and peoples 
which, for the first time, will write their faiths 
together in the books of the history of the world." 

Then, referring to the realization of his long-cher- 
ished hope to visit this country, and to the impor- 
tance of the history and influence of the Greek 
church, which it was his privilege to represent, he 
turned to the dignitaries on the platform, and lift- 
ing his hands, he said: 

" Reverend ministers of the eloquent name of 
God, the Creator of your earth and mine, I salute 
you on the one hand as my brothers in Jesus Christ, 
from whom, according to our faith, all good has 
originated in this world. I salute you in the name 
of the divinely inspired gospel, which, according to 
our faith, is the salvation of the soul of man and 
the happiness of man in this world. 

"All men have a common Creator, without any 
distinction between the rich and the poor, the ruler 
and the ruled; all men have a common Creator with- 
out any distinction of clime or race, without distinc- 
tion of nationality or ancestry, of name or nobility; 
all men have a common Creator, and consequently a 
common Father in God. 



32 world's religious congresses. 

" I raise up my hands and I bless with heartfelt 
love the great country and the happy, glorious peo- 
ple of the United States." 

The observer could not but notice that the eyes of 
the audience were fixed on the Orient, and as they 
listened to the salutations of evangelical Christianity, 
and Roman Christianity, and Eastern Christianity, 
in succession, expectation was raised to the point 
where relief seemed necessary; and when President 
Bonney presented P. C. Mozoomdar of India, author 
of the ''Oriental Christ," and representative of the 
Brahmo Somaj, the audience greeted him with the 
wildest applause. Mozoomdar had been in this coun- 
try ten years ago; many had heard him then, and 
added to their welcome to India greeting to a friend: 

"Leaders of the Parliament of Religions, men 
and women of America: The recognition, sympa- 
thy, and welcome you have given to India 
to day are gratifying to thousands of liberal Hindu 
religious thinkers, whose representatives I see 
around me, and, on behalf of my countrymen, I cor- 
dially thank you. India claims her place in the 
brotherhood of mankind, not only because of her 
great antiquity, but equally for what has taken place 
there in recent times. Modern India has sprung from 
ancient India by a law of evolution, a process of 
continuity which explains some of the most difficult 
problems of our national life. In prehistoric times 
our forefathers worshiped the great living Spirit 
God, and, after many strange vicissitudes, we Indian 
theists, led by the light of ages, worship the same 
living Spirit God, and none other. 






REV. JOHN HENRY BARROWS, D. D , 

Chairman of the Committee on Religious Congresses. 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 33 

"Perhaps in other ancient lauds this law of con- 
tinuity has not been so well kept. Egypt aspired 
to build up the vast eternal in her elaborate symbol- 
ism and mighty architecture. Where is Egypt 
to-day? Passed away as a mystic dream in her pyr- 
amids, catacombs, and Sphinx of the desert. 

"Greece tried to embody her genius of wisdom 
and beauty in her wonderful creations of marble, in 
her all-embracing philosophy; but where is ancient 
Greece to -day? She lies buried under her exquisite 
monuments and sleeps the sleep from which there is 
no waking. 

' ' The Roman cohorts under whose victorious tramp 
the earth shook to its center, the Roman theaters, 
laws, and institutions — where are they? Hidden 
behind the oblivious centuries, or, if they Hit across 
the mind, only point a moral or adorn a tale. 

"The Hebrews, the chosen of Jehovah, with their 
long line of law and prophets, how are they? 
Wanderers on the face of the globe, driven by king 
and kaiser, the objects of persecution to the cruel 
or objects of sympathy to the kind. Mount Moria 
is in the hands of the Mussulman, Zion is silent, and 
over the ruins of Solomon's Temple a few men beat 
their breasts and wet their white beards with their 
tears. 

"But India, the ancient among ancients, the 
elder of the elders, lives to-day with her old civili- 
zation, her old laws and her profound religion. 
The old mother of the nations and religions is still a 
power in the world; she has often risen from apparent 
death, and in the future will arise again. When the 



34 world's religious congresses. 

Vedic faith declined in India the esoteric religion of 
theVedantas arose; then the everlasting philosophy 
of the Darasanas. When these declined again the 
light of Asia arose and established a standard of 
moral perfection which will yet tea ch the world a long 
time. When Buddhism had its downfall the Shaiva 
and Vaish Rava revived and continued in the land 
down to the invasion of the Mohammedans. The 
Greeks and Scythians, the Turks and Tartars, the 
Monguls and Mussulman rolled over her country 
like torrents of destruction. Our independence, our 
greatness, our prestige — all had gone, but nothing 
could take away our religious vitality. 

"We are Hindus still, and shall always be. Now 
sits Christianity on the throne of India, with the 
gospel of peace on one hand and the scepter of civ- 
ilization on the other. Now it is not the time 
to despair and die. Behold the aspirations of 
modern India — intellectual, social, political — all 
awakened; our religious instincts stirred to the 
roots. If that had not been the case do you think 
Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and others would have 
traversed these 14,000 miles to pay the tribute of 
their sympathy before this august Parliament of 
Religions ? 

' ' ~No individual, no denomination can more fully 
sympathize or more heartily join your conferences 
than we men of the Brahmo Somaj, whose religion is 
the harmony of all religions, and whose congrega- 
tion is the brotherhood of all nations. 

"Such, as our aspirations and sympathies, dear 
brethren, accept them. Let me thank you again for 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 35 

this welcome in the name of my countrymen, and 
wish every prosperity and success to your labors." 

Perhaps the most remarkable scene of the day 
occurred when President Bonney introduced the 
representative of the Chinese government and of 
Confucianism. "We have not treated China very 
well in this country," remarked Mr. Bonney. " We 
have sometimes been severe toward her, and some- 
times have persecuted her children, but the Em- 
peror of China has responded in a Christian spirit to 
our call, and sent a delegate to this congress. This 
delegate is the Hon. Pung Quang Yu, secretary of 
the Chinese legation in Washington." 

When Pung Quang Yu came forward he was 
greeted with a furor of applause. Men and 
women rose to their feet in the audience, and there 
was a wild waving of hats and handkerchiefs. The 
delegate's speech, translated by his secretary, was 
read in ringing tones by Doctor Barrows: 

" On behalf of the imperial government of China I 
take great pleasure in responding to the cordial 
words which the chairman of the general committee 
and others have spoken to-day. This is a great 
moment in the history of nations and religions. For 
the first time men of various faiths meet in one great 
hall to report what they believe and the grounds for 
their belief. The great sage of China, who is hon- 
ored not only by the millions of our own land, but 
throughout the world, believed that duty was 
summed up in reciprocity, and I think the word 
reciprocity finds a new meaning and glory in the 
proceedings of this historic parliament. I am glad 



36 

that the great empire of China has accepted the 
invitation of those who have called this parliament 
and is to be represented in this great school of com- 
parative religion. Only the happiest results will 
come, I am sure, from our meeting together in the 
spirit of friendliness. Each may learn from the 
other some lessons, I trust, of charity and good- will, 
and discover what is excellent in other faiths than 
his own. In behalf of my government and people I 
extend to the representatives gathered in this great 
hall the friendliest salutations, and to those who 
have spoken I give my most cordial thanks." 

A representative of the Shinto faith, the state 
religion of Japan, lit. -Rev. Eenchi Shibata, was 
next introduced. The bishop appeared in his full 
pontificals, and salaamed profoundly toward the 
audience and to the right and left when he came 
forward. Mr. Bonney, in his words of introduction, 
alluded in appropriate language to the rapidity with 
which Japan had advanced in the path of modern 
civilization and the peculiar kindness felt by the 
people of this country toward the people of the 
empire of the mikado. The Shinto bishop's address 
was read by Doctor Barrows. It was in these 
words: 

' ' I can not help doing honor to the congress of 
religions held here in Chicago, as the results of the 
partial effort of those philanthropic brothers who 
have undertaken this, the greatest meeting ever 
held. It was fourteen years ago that I expressed, 
in my own country, the hope that there should be a 
friendly meeting between the world's religionists, 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 37 

and now I realize my hope with great joy in being- 
able to attend these phenomenal meetings. 

"In the history of the past we read of repeated 
and fierce conflicts between different religions creeds 
which sometimes ended in war. But that time has 
passed away and things have changed with advanc- 
ing civilization. It is a great blessing, not only to 
the religions themselves, bnt also to human affairs, 
that the different religionists can thus gather in a 
friendly way and exchange their thoughts and opin- 
ions on the important problems of the age. 

" I trust that these repeated meetings will gradu- 
ally increase the fraternal relations between the dif- 
ferent religionists in investigating the truths of the 
universe, and be instrumental in uniting all relig- 
ions of the world, and in bringing all hostile nations 
into peaceful relations by leading them to the way 
of perfect justice." 

When he had finished reading, Doctor Barrows 
introcl uced the delegation of Buddhist priests, who 
remained standing while Z. Noguchi, their inter 
prefer, said: "I thank you on behalf of the Jap- 
anese Buddhist priests for the welcome you have 
given us and for the kind invitation to participate 
in the proceedings of this congress." 

The Orient has been reached, and Buddhism has 
acknowledged its welcome, and all eyes turn to one 
of the most winning figures on the platform, tall, 
clad in white, soft and closely clinging robes, ideal- 
istic face, gentle eyes, waving black hair and scanty 
beard — the gentle and lovable Dharmapala of 
Ceylon. 



38 world's religious congresses. 

"Friends: I bring to you the good wishes of 
475,000,000 of Buddhists, the blessings and peace of 
the religious founder of that system which has pre- 
vailed so many centuries in Asia, which has made 
Asia mild, and which is to-day in its twenty-fourth 
century of existence, the prevailing religion of the 
country. I have sacrificed the greatest of all work 
to attend this parliament. I have left the work of 
consolidation — an important work which we have 
begun after Y00 years — the work of consolidating 
the different Buddhist countries, which is the most 
important work in the history of modern Buddhism. 
When I read the programme of this Parliament of 
Religions I saw it was simply the reecho of a great 
consummation which the Indian Buddhists accom- 
plished twenty-one centuries ago. 

' ' At that time Asoka, the great emperor, held a 
council in the city of Patna, of 1,000 scholars, which 
was in session for seven months. The proceedings 
were epitomized and carved on rock and scattered 
all over the Indian peninsula and the then known 
globe. After the consummation of that programme 
the great emperor sent the gentle teachers, the mild 
disciples of Buddha in the garb that you see on this 
platform, to instruct the world. In that plain garb 
they went across the deep rivers, the Himalayas, 
to the plains of Mongolia and the Chinese plains, 
and to the far-off beautiful isles, the empire of the 
rising sun; and the influence of that congress held 
twenty- one centuries ago is to-day a living power, 
because you everywhere see mildness in Asia. 

" Go to any Buddhist country, and where do you 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 39 

find such healthy compassion and tolerance as you 
find there? Go to Japan, and what do you see? 
The noblest lessons of tolerance and gentleness. Go 
to any of the Buddhist countries and you will see 
the carrying out of the programme adopted at the 
congress called by the Emperor Asoka. 

" Why do I come here to day % Because I find 
in this new city, in this land of freedom, the very 
place where that programme can also be carried 
out. For one year I meditated whether this par- 
liament would be a success. Then I wrote to Doctor 
Barrows that this would be the proudest occasion of 
modern history and the crowning work of nineteen 
centuries. Yes, friends, if you are serious, if you 
are unselfish, if you are altruistic, this programme 
can be carried out and the twentieth century will see 
the teachings of the meek and lowly Jesus accom- 
plished. 

"I hope in this great city, the youngest of all 
cities, but the greatest of all cities, this programme 
will be carried out, and that the name of Doctor Bar- 
rows will shine forth as the American Asoka. And 
I hope that the noble lessons of tolerance learned in 
this majestic assembly will result in the dawning of 
universal peace which will last for twenty centuries 
more." 

A short but most pleasing address was made by 
Virchand A. Gandhi, a lawyer of Bombay, and one 
of the chief exponents of Jain religion of that 
oriental country. Mr. Gandhi spoke as follows: 

"Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: I will 



40 world's religious congresses. 

not trouble you with, a long speech. I, like my 
respected friends, Mr. Mozoomdar and others, come 
from India, the mother of religions. I represent 
Jainism, a faith older than Buddhism, similar to 
it in its ethics, but different from it in its psy- 
chology, and professed by 1,500,000 of India's 
most peaceful and law-abiding citizens. You have 
heard so many speeches from eloquent members, 
and as I shall speak later on at some length, I will 
therefore, at present, only offer on behalf of m}^ 
community and their high priest, Moni Atma 
Ranji, whom I especially represent here, our sincere 
thanks for the kind welcome you have given us. 
This spectacle of the learned leaders of thought and 
religion meeting together on a common platform, 
and throwing light on religious problems, has been 
the dream of Atma Ranji' s life. He has commis- 
sioned me to say to you that he offers his most 
cordial congratulations on his own behalf, and on 
behalf of the Jain community, for your having 
achieved the consummation of that grand idea of 
convening a parliament of religions." 

Professor C. N. Chakravarti, a Theosophist, 
from Allahabad, India, responded in these words: 

' ' I came here to represent a religion the dawn of 
which appeared in a misty antiquity which the 
powerful microscope of modern research has not yet 
been able to discover; the depth of whose begin- 
nings the plummet of history has not been able to 
sound. From time immemorial spirit has been 
represented by white and matter has been repre- 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 41 

sented by black, and the two sister streams which 
join at the town from which I came, Allahabad, 
represent two sources of spirit and matter, accord- 
ing to the j)hilosophy of my people. And when I 
think that here, in this city of Chicago, this vortex 
of physicality, this center of material civilization, 
you hold a parliament of religions; when I think 
that, in the heart of the World's Fair, where abound 
all the excellencies of the jmysical world, you have 
provided also a hall for the feast of reason and the 
flow of soul, I am once more reminded of my native 
land. 

"Why? Because here, even here, I find the same 
two sister streams of spirit and matter, of the intel- 
lect and physicality, joining hand and hand, repre- 
senting the symbolical evolution of the universe. I 
need hardly tell you that, in holding this Parlia- 
ment of Religions, where all the religions of the 
world are to be represented, you have acted worth- 
ily of the race that is in the vanguard of civili- 
zation — a civilization the chief characteristic of 
which, to my mind, is widening toleration, breadth 
of heart, and liberality toward all the different 
religions of the world. In allowing men of different 
shades of religious opinion, and holding different 
views as to philosophical and metaphysical prob- 
lems, to speak from the same platform — aye, even 
allowing me, who, I confess, am a heathen, as you 
call me, to speak from the same platform with 
them — you have acted in a manner worthy of the 
motherland of the society which I have come to 
represent to-day. The fundamental principle of 



42 

that society is universal tolerance; its cardinal 
belief that underneath the superficial strata runs 
the living water of truth. 

"I have always felt that between India and 
America there was a closer bond of union in the 
times gone by, and I do think it is probable that 
there may be a subtler reason for the identity of 
our names than either the theory of Johnson or the 
mistake of Columbus can account for. It is true 
that I belong to a religion which is now decrepit 
with age, and that you belong to a race in the first 
flutter of life, bristling with energy. And yet you 
can not be surprised at the sympathy between us, 
because you must have observed the secret union 
that sometimes exists between age and childhood. 

"It is true that in the East we have been accus- 
tomed to look toward something which is beyond 
matter. We have been taught for ages after ages 
and centuries after centuries to turn our gaze 
inward toward realms that are not those which are 
reached by the help of the physical senses. This 
fact has given rise to the various schools of philos- 
ophy that exist to-day in India, exciting the 
wonder and admiration, not only of the dead East, 
but of the living and rising West. We have in 
India, even to this day, thousands of people who 
give up as trash, as nothing, all the material, com- 
forts and luxuries of life with the hope, with the 
realization that, great as the physical body may be, 
there is something greater within man, underneath 
the universe, that is to be longed for and striven 
after. 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 43 

' 'In the West you have evolved such a stupen- 
dous energy on the physical plane, such unparalleled 
vigor on the intellectual plane, that it strikes any 
stranger landing on your shores with a strange 
amazement. And yet I can read, even in this 
atmosphere of material progress, I can discern 
beneath this thickness of material luxury a secret 
and mystic aspiration to something spiritual. 

" I can see that even you are getting tired of your 
steam, of your electricity, and the thousand different 
material comforts that follow these two great powers. 
I can see that there is a feeling of despondency 
coming even here — that matter pursued, however 
vigorously, can be only to the death of all, and it is 
only through the clear atmosphere of spirituality 
that you can mount up to the regions of peace and 
harmony. In the West, therefore, you have devel- 
oped this material tendency. In the East we have 
developed a great deal of the spiritual tendency; 
but even in this West, as I travel from place to 
place, from New York to Cincinnati, and from Cin- 
cinnati to Chicago, I have observed an ever-increas- 
ing readiness of people to assimilate spiritual ideas, 
regardless of the source from which they emanate. 
This, ladies and gentlemen, I consider a most 
significant sign of the future, because through this 
and through ' the mists of prejudice that still hang 
on the horizon will be consummated the great event 
of the future, the union of the East and of the 
West. 

"The East enjoys the sacred satisfaction of hav- 
ing given birth to all the great religions of the 



44 woeld's eeligious congeesses. 

world, and even as the physical sun rises ever from 
the east, the sun of spirituality has always dawned 
in the East. To the West belongs the proud privi- 
lege of having advanced on the intellectual and on 
the moral plane and of having supplied to the world 
all the various contrivances of material luxuries and 
of physical comfort. I look, therefore, upon a 
union of the East and West as a most significant 
event, and I look with great hope upon the day 
when the East and the West will be like brothers 
helping each other, each supplying to the other 
what it wants — the West supplying the vigor, the 
youth, the power of organization, and the East 
opening up its inestimable treasures of a spiritual 
law, and which are now locked up in the treasure 
boxes grown rusty with age. 

' ' And I think that this day, with the sitting of 
the Parliament of Religions, we begin the work of 
building up a perennial fountain from which will 
flow for the next century waters of life and light 
and of peace, slaking the thirst of the thousands of 
millions that are to come after us." 

Swami Vivekananda of Bombay, India, arose, a 
magnificent figure of manly beauty, in his orange 
robe and turban, with striking, strong, and repose- 
ful countenance, and said: " Sisters and brothers of 
America," whereupon there arose a peal of applause 
in acknowledgment of the originality of the saluta- 
tion, and perhaps not less as testifying interest in 
the personality of the speaker. 

"It fills my heart with joy unspeakable," he 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 45 

said, " to rise in response to the warm and cordial 
welcome which you have given us. I thank you in 
the name of the most ancient order of monks in the 
world; I thank you in the name of the mother of 
religions, and I thank you in the name of the millions 
and millions of Hindu people of all classes and 
sects. 

"My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this 
platform who have told you that these men from 
far-off nations may well claim the honor of bearing 
to the different lands the idea of toleration. I am 
proud to belong to a religion which has taught the 
world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We 
believe not only in universal toleration, but we 
accept all religions to be true. I am proud to tell 
you that I belong to a religion into whose sacred 
language, the Sanscrit, the word seclusion is untrans- 
latable. I am proud to belong to a nation which has 
sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all 
religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud 
to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the 
purest remnant of the Israelites, a remnant which 
came to Southern India and took refuge with us in 
the very year in which their holy temple was shat- 
tered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to 
belong to the religion which has sheltered and is 
still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian 
nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines 
from a hymn which I remember to have repeated 
from my earliest boyhood, which is every day 
repeated by millions of human beings: 'As the 
different streams having their sources in different 



46 

places all mingle their waters in the sea, Lord, 
so the different paths which men take through 
different tendencies, various though they ap'pear, 
crooked or straight, all lead to thee.' 

"The present convention, which is one of the 
most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vin- 
dication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful 
doctrine preached in Gita, 'Whosoever comes to 
me, through whatsoever form I reach him, they are 
all struggling through paths that in the end always 
lead to me.' Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible 
descendant, fanaticism, have possessed long this 
beautiful earth. It has filled the earth with vio- 
lence, drenched it often and often with human 
blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations 
to despair. Had it not been for this horrible demon 
human society would be far more advanced than it 
is now. But its time has come, and I fervently hope 
that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of 
this convention will be the death-knell to all fanat- 
icism, to all persecutions with the sword or the pen, 
and to all uncharitable feelings between persons 
wending their way to the same goal." 

Many eyes have rested upon a sweet-faced woman 
in oriental dress, and when Doctor Barrows intro- 
duced Miss Jeanne Sorabji, from far-off India, many 
were surprised to learn that she was an earnest 
Christian convert with a sweet and simple faith to 
testify. 

" Doctor Barrows just told you that I belonged to 
the order of Parsee. He is correct in one way and not 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 47 

in another. My people were fire- worshipers, but I 
am not now. Before I go on further I wish to thank 
all those who have extended their welcome to lis. 
This morning as I looked around and saw the many- 
faces that greeted a welcome I felt indeed that it 
was the best day I have seen in Chicago. I have 
been here for some time, and I have asked the ques- 
tion over and over again: ' Where is religious 
America to be found — Christian America ? ' To-day 
I see it all around me. You have given me a wel- 
come. I will give you a greeting from my country. 
When we meet one another in our land the first 
thing we say to each other is * Peace be with you.' 
I say it to you to-day in all sincerity, in all love. I 
feel to-day that the great banner over us is the ban- 
ner of love. I feel to-day more than ever that it is 
beautiful to belong to the family of God, to acknowl- 
edge the Lord Christ. 

' ' My father, at the age of eighteen, was brought to 
the knowledge of Christ by the light of an English 
missionary. He gave up friends and countrymen, 
rank, and wealth, and money, to be a disciple of the 
Lord Jesus Christ; and I tell you, friends, that it is 
a great privilege and a great honor to be able to 
stand here and say to you that I love that Lord 
Christ, and I will stand by him and under his ban- 
ner until the end of my life. 

"I would close with one little message from my 
countrywomen. When I was leaving the shores of 
Bombay the women of my country wanted to know 
where I was going, and I told them I was going to 
America on a visit. They asked me whether I would 



48 world's religious congresses. 

be at this congress. I thought then I would only 
come in as one of the audience, but I have the great 
privilege and honor given to me to stand here and 
speak to you, and I give you the message as it was 
given to me. The Christian women of my land 
said: 'Give the women of America our love and 
tell them that we love Jesus, and that we shall 
always pray that our countrywomen may do the 
same. Tell the women of America that we are fast 
being educated. We shall one day be able to stand 
by them and converse with them and be able to 
delight in all they delight in.' 

"And so I have a message from each one of my 
countrywomen, and once more I will just say that I 
haven't words enough in which to thank you for the 
welcome you have given to all those who have come 
here from the East. When I came here this morn- 
ing and saw my countrymen my heart was warmed, 
and I thought I would never feel homesick again, 
and I feel to-day as if I were at home. Seeing your 
kindly faces has turned away the heartache. 

" We are all under the one banner, love. In the 
name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I thank you. You 
will hear possibly the words in his own voice saying 
unto you, ' Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the 
least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto 



Salutations and responses from many Christians 
I have omitted. They contained nothing new, and 
little that was strong in promise, beyond the fact 
of interest in what was to follow, except one, which 



OPENING ADDKESSES. 49 

I have saved to conclude the review of the opening- 
day because of its originality. When Prince Serge 
Wolkonsky of Russia was introduced he expressed 
thanks for the honor of the invitation, the more 
because he was not an ecclesiastic, nor a representa- 
tive of his government at the parliament, and could 
only respond as a man — a true prince among men, 
many said of him. 

"Those who during the last week have had the 
opportunity of attending not only the congresses of 
one single church, but who could witness different 
congresses of different churches and congregations, 
must have been struck with a noticeable fact. They 
went to the Catholic congress and heard beautiful 
words of charity and love. Splendid orators invoked 
the blessings of heaven upon the children of the Cath- 
olic church, and in eloquent terms the listeners were 
entreated to love their human brothers, in the name 
of the Catholic church. They went to the Lutheran 
congress and heard splendid words of humanity and 
brotherhood, orators inspired with love, and the 
blessing of Gfod invoked on the children of the 
Lutheran church. Those who were present were 
taught to love their human brothers, in the name of 
the Lutheran church. They went to other more 
limited congresses, and everywhere they heard these 
same great words, proclaiming these same great 
ideas and inspiring these same great feelings. They 
saw a Catholic archbishop who went to a Jewish 
congress and with fiery eloquence brought feelings 
of brotherhood to his Hebraic sisters. Not in one 
of these congresses did a speaker forget- that he 



50 

belonged to humanity, and that his own church or 
congregation was but a starting-point, a center, for 
a further radiation. 

" This is the noticeable fact that must have struck 
everybody, and everybody must have asked himself 
at the end of the week: 'Why don't they come 
together, all these people who all speak the same 
language? Why do not all these splendid orators 
unite their voices in one single chorus, and, if they 
preach the same ideas, why don't they proclaim 
them in the name of the same and single truth that 
inspires them all?' This seems to have been the 
idea of those who, in composing the programmes of 
the religious congresses, decided that the general 
religious congress should follow the minor ones. 
To-night, in fact, we see the representatives of dif- 
ferent churches gathered together and actuated with 
one common desire of union. 

"Being called to welcome it on the day of its open- 
ing, I will take the liberty of relating to you a pop- 
ular legend of my country. The story may appear 
rather too humorous for the occasion, but one of 
our national writers says: ' Humor is an invisible 
tear through a visible smile,' and we think that 
human tears, human sorrow and pain are sacred 
enough to be brought even before a religious con- 
gress. 

"There was an old woman who for many cent- 
uries suffered tortures in the flames of hell, for she 
had been a great sinner during her earthly life. 
One day she saw far away in the distance an angel 
taking his flight through the blue skies; and with 



OPENING ADDRESSES. 51 

the whole strength of her voice she called to him. 
The call must have been desperate, for the angel 
stopped in his flight, and coming down to her asked 
her what she wanted. 

" ' When you reach the throne of God,' she said, 
■ tell him that a miserable creature has suffered 
more than she can bear, and that she asks the Lord 
to be delivered from these tortures.' 

"The angel promised to do so, and flew away. 
When he had transmitted the message, God said: 

" ' Ask her whether she has done any good to any 
one during her life.' 

' ' The old woman strained her memory in search of 
a good action during her sinful past, and all at 
once: 'I've got one,' she joyfully exclaimed; 
' one day I gave a carrot to a hungry beggar. ' 

"The angel reported the answer. 

" 'Take a carrot,' said God to the angel, 'and 
stretch it out to her. Let her grasp it, and if the 
plant is strong enough to draw her out from hell 
she shall be saved.' 

" This the angel did. The poor old woman clung 
to the carrot. The angel began to pull, and, lo! she 
began to rise. Bat when her body was half out of 
the flames she felt a weight at her feet. Another 
sinner was clinging to her. She kicked, but it did 
not help. The sinner would not let go his hold, 
and the angel, continuing to pull, was lifting them 
both. But, oh! another sinner clung to them, and 
then a third, and more, and always more — a chain 
of miserable creatures hung at the old woman's 
feet. The angel never ceased pulling. It did not 



52 world's religious congresses. 

seem to be any heavier than a small carrot could 
support, and they all were lifted in the air. But 
the old woman suddenly took fright. Too many 
people were availing themselves of her last chance 
of salvation, and, kicking and pushing those who 
were clinging to her, she exclaimed: ' Leave me 
alone ! hands off ! the carrot is mine.' 

"No sooner had she pronounced this word ' mine ' 
than the tiny stem broke, and they all fell back to 
hell, and forever. 

" In its poetical artlessness and popular simplicity 
this legend is too eloquent to need interpretation. 
If any individual, any community, any congrega- 
tion, any church, possesses a portion of truth and 
of good, let that truth shine for everybody; let that 
good become the property of everyone. The substi- 
tution of the word ' mine ' by the word ' ours ' and 
that of 'ours' by the word 'everyone's' — this is 
what will secure a fruitful result to our collective 
efforts as well as to our individual activities. 

" This is why we welcome and greet the opening of 
this congress, where, in a combined effort of the 
representatives of all churches, all that is great and 
good and true in each of them is brought together 
in the name of the same God and for the sake of the 
same man. 

"We congratulate the president, the members, and 
all the listeners of this congress upon the tendency 
of union that has gathered them on the soil of the 
country whose allegorical eagle, spreading her 
mighty wings over the stars and stripes, holds in her 
talons those splendid words, ' E Pluribus Unum.' " 



CHAPTER III. 

A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 

THOSE who kept files of the full reports in the 
daily press of the addresses before the parlia- 
ment, or who look forward to the official pub- 
lication of the proceedings with the intention of 
reviewing these deliverances, are likely to be appalled 
at the magnitude of the undertaking when they shall 
seriously approach it. A lack of classification in 
the programme makes 1he systematic arrangement 
of opinion on the great subjects of religion a work 
of toil, even for an expert. Each man speaks as if 
he had the whole field before him, and therefore of 
many things which throw no light upon the specific 
system of thought which he represents. The popu- 
lar interest in seeing and hearing many representa- 
tive men doubtless determined the idea, of the 
programme, but the permanent value of the result 
is greatly diminished by the excessive amount of 
redundant and indeterminate discourse. 

My own idea of the most useful order of pro- 
gramme, proposed at the outset and urged through- 
out, was an arrangement of great subjects: God, 
Revelation, Sin and Reconciliation, Conduct of 
Life, Immortality, etc. " What have you to say of 
God?" Let the Hindu answer, the Buddhist, the 
Parsee, the Mohammedan, the Jew, the Greek 

(53) 



54 

Christian, the Catholic, and so on, in brief, specific, 
and inclusive statements. Then propound the next 
subject and follow in the same order. If this dream 
of a religious symposium had been practicable, the 
result would have been a most complete cyclopedia 
of religious thought, showing at a glance what is 
common and what is distinctive in existing faiths 
on any subject. The interest centered, however, in 
great men rather than in great subjects; and the 
addresses, not having as an aim definite statements 
on specific questions, present a collection of ideas 
so vast as to almost defy the classification necessary 
to helpful comparison. 

Whatever of permanent value is to result from the 
congress of religions, apart from coming together 
in friendly interchange and the breaking of preju- 
dice, must come from comparison of views; and 
before there can be such comparison there must be 
some arrangement. I propose, therefore, in this 
chapter to attempt to bring into contrast some of 
the more important deliverances, first in general, and 
then more briefly under specific subjects. 

We may for the purpose of a general comparison 
set over against each other some extended passages 
from representatives of Hinduism, orthodox and 
liberal Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Moham- 
medanism, and the Roman Catholic and Greek 
churches, together with some foreign criticism and 
appeal. 

THE HINDU. 

Swami Vivekananda may probably be considered 
as a fair exponent of what Hinduism is with the 
liberally educated men of India: 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 55 

"Three religions now stand in the world which 
have come down to us from time prehistoric — Hin- 
duism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism. These all have 
received tremendous shocks, and all of them prove 
by their revival their internal strength; but Judaism 
failed to absorb Christianity, and was driven out of 
its place of birth by its all-conquering daughter. 
Sect after sect has arisen in India, and seemed to 
shake the religion of the Vedas to its very founda- 
tions, but, like the waters of the seashore in a tre- 
mendous earthquake, it has receded for awhile, only 
to return in an all-absorbing flood ; and when the 
tumult of the rush was over these sects had been all 
sucked in, absorbed, and assimilated in the immense 
body of another faith. 

< ' From the high spiritual flights of philosophy, 
of which the latest discoveries of science seem like 
echoes, from the atheism of the Jains to the low 
ideas of idolatry and the multifarious mythologies, 
each and all have a place in the Hindu' s religion. 

"Where then, the question arises, where then the 
common center to which all these widely diverging 
radii converge % Where is the common basis upon 
which all these seemingly hopeless contradictions 
rest? And this is the question which I shall at- 
tempt to answer. 

"The Hindus have received their religion through 
the revelation of the Vedas. They hold that the 
Vedas are without beginning and without end. It 
may sound ludicrous to this audience how a book 
can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas 
no books are meant. They mean the accumulated 



56 world's religious congresses. 

treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different 
X3ersons in different times. Just as the law of gravi- 
tation existed before its discovery, and would exist 
if all humanity forgot it, so with the laws that gov- 
ern the spiritual world; the moral, ethical, and spir- 
itual relations between soul and soul, and between 
individual spirits and the Father of all spirits, were 
there before their discovery, and would remain even 
if we forgot them. 

' ' The discoverers of these laws are called Bishis, 
and we honor them as perfected beings, and I am 
glad to tell this audience that some of the very best 
of them were women. 

"Here it may be said that the laws, as laws, may 
be without end, but they must have had a begin- 
ning. The Vedas teach us that creation is without 
beginning or end. Science has pjroved to us that the 
sum total of the cosmic energy is the same through- 
out all time. Then, if there was a time when noth- 
ing existed, where was all this manifested energy 1 
Some say it was in a potential form in God. But 
then God is sometimes potential and sometimes 
kinetic, which would make him mutable, and every- 
thing mutable is a compound, and everything com- 
pound must undergo that change which is called 
destruction. Therefore, God would die. There- 
fore, there never was a time when there was ,no crea- 
tion. 

" Well, then, the human soul is eternal and im- 
mortal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a 
change of center from one body to another. The 
present is determined by our past actions, and the f ut- 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 57 

ure will be by the present. The soul will go on evolv- 
ing up or reverting back from birth to birth and 
death to death, like a tiny boat in a tempest, raised 
one moment on the foaming crest of a billow and 
dashed down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling 
to and fro at the mercy of good and bad actions, a 
powerless, helpless wreck in an ever-raging, ever- 
rushing, uncompromising current of cause and 
effect; a little moth placed under the wheel of caus- 
ation, which rolls on crushing everything in its way, 
and waits not for the widow's tears or the orphan's 
cry. 

"The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law 
of nature. Is'there no hope ? Is there no escape \ 
The cry that went up from the bottom of the heart 
of despair reached the throne of mercy, and words 
of hope and consolation came down and inspired a 
Vedic sage, and he stood up before the world and in 
trumpet voice proclaimed the glad tidings to the 
world: ' Hear, ye children of immortal bliss, even 
ye that resisted in higher spheres; I have found the 
ancient one, who is beyond all darkness, all delu- 
sion, and knowing him alone you shall be saved 
from death again.' 'Children of immortal bliss!' 
What a sweet, what a hopeful name! Allow me to 
call you, brethren, by that sweet name, 'heirs of 
immortal bliss ' ; yea, the Hindu refuses to call you 
sinners. 

"Thus it is the Vedas proclaim, not a dreadful 
combination of unforgiving laws, not an endless 
prison of cause and effect, but that, at the head of 
all these laws, in and through every particle of mat- 



58 

ter and force, stands one ' through whose command 
the wind blows, the fire burns, the clouds rain, and 
death stalks upon the earth.' And what is his 
nature? 

"He is everywhere, the pure and formless one, 
the almighty, and the all-merciful. ' Thou art our 
father, thou art our mother, thou art our beloved 
friend, thou art the source of all strength. Thou 
art he that bearest the burdens of the universe; help 
me bear the little burden of this life.' Thus sang 
the Kishis of the Veda. And how to worship him? 
Through love. ' He is to be worshiped as the one 
beloved dearer than everything in this and the next 
life.' 

"This is the doctrine of love preached in the 
Yedas, and let us see how it is fully developed and 
preached by Krishna, whom the Hindus believe to 
have been God incarnate on earth. 

"He taught that a man ought to live in this world 
like a lotus leaf, which grows in water but is never 
moistened by water; so a man ought to live in this 
world — his heart for God and his hands for work. 

" It is good to love God for hope of reward in this 
or the next world, but it is better to love God for 
love's sake; and the prayer goes, 'Lord, I do not 
want wealth, nor children, nor learning. If it be 
thy will I will go to a hundred hells, but grant me 
this, that I may love thee without the hope of reward 
— unselfishly love for love' s sake. ' One of the disci- 
ples of Krishna, the then Emperor of India, was 
driven from his throne by his enemies and had to 
take shelter in a forest in the Himalayas with his 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 59 

queen, and there one day the queen was asking him 
how it was that he, the most virtuous of men, 
should suffer so much misery, and Yuchistera 
answered: 'Behold, my queen, the Himalayas, 
how grand and beautiful they are! I love them. 
They do not give me anything, but my nature is to 
love the grand, the beautiful, therefore I love them; 
similarly, I love the Lord. He is the source of all 
beauty, of all sublimity. He is the only object to 
be loved. My nature is to love him, and therefore 
I love. I do not pray for anything. I do not ask 
for anything. Let him place me wherever he likes. 
I must live for love's sake. I can not trade in love.' 

"The Yedas teach that the soul is divine, only 
held under bondage of matter, and perfection will 
be reached when the bond shall burst, and the word 
they use is, therefore, Mukto — freedom — freedom 
from the bonds of imperfection; freedom from death 
and misery. 

1 'And they teach that this bondage can only fall 
off through the mercy of God, and this mercy comes 
to the pure. So purity is the condition of his 
mercy. How that mercy acts! He reveals himself 
to the pure heart, and the pure and stainless man 
sees God, yea, even in this life; and then, and then 
only, all the crookedness of the heart is made 
straight. Then all doubt ceases. Man is no more 
the freak of a terrible law of causation. So this is 
the very center, the very vital conception, of Hin- 
duism. The Hindu does not want to live upon 
words and theories — if there are existences beyond 
the ordinary sensual existence, he wants to come 



60 world's religious congresses. 

face to face with them. If there is a soul in him 
which is not matter, if there is an all- merciful 
universal soul, he will go to him direct. He must 
see him, and that alone can destroy all doubts. So 
the best proof a Hindu sage gives about the soul, 
about God, is, 'I have seen the soul, I have seen 
God. 1 

"And that is the only condition of perfection. 
The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and 
attempts to believe a certain doctrine and dogma, 
but in realizing — not in believing, but in being and 
becoming. So the whole struggle in their system 
is a constant struggle to become perfect, to become 
divine, to reach God and see God; and in this reach- 
ing God, seeing God, becoming perfect, even as the 
Father in heaven is perfect, consists the religion of 
the Hindus. And what becomes of man when he 
becomes perfect? He lives a life of bliss, infinite. 
He enjoys infinite and perfect bliss, having obtained 
the only thing in which man ought to have pleas- 
ure — God — and enjoys the bliss with God. 

' ' So far all the Hindus are agreed — this is the 
common religion of all the sects of India; but then 
the question comes — perfection is absolute, and the 
absolute can not be two or three. It can not have 
any qualities; it can not be an individual ; and so when 
a soul becomes perfect and absolute it mus;t become 
one with the Brahma, and he would only realize the 
Lord as the }:>erfection, the reality, of his own 
nature and existence — existence absolute; knowl- 
edge absolute, and life absolute. We have often 
and often read about this being called the losing of 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 61 

individuality, as in becoming a stock or a stone. 
'He jests at scars that never felt a wound ' 

"I tell you it is nothing of the kind. If it is 
happiness to enjoy the consciousness of this small 
body, it must be more happiness to enjoy the con- 
sciousness of two bodies, or three, four, five — 
and the ultimate of happiness would be reached 
when it would become a universal consciousness. 

"Therefore, to gain this infinite universal individ- 
uality, this miserable little individuality must go. 
Then alone can death cease, when I am one with 
life. Then alone can misery cease, when I am with 
happiness itself. Then alone can all errors cease, 
when I am one with knowledge itself." 

Speaking later of the religion of the simple- 
minded he said, "There is no polytheism in India," 
and the use of images "is not idolatry." Continu- 
ing, he said: 

" Superstition is the enemy of man, but bigotry is 
worse. Why does a Christian go to church % Why 
is the cross holy ? Why is the face turned toward 
the sky in prayer ? Why are there so many images 
in the Catholic church? Why are there so many 
images in the minds of Protestants when they pray % 
My brethren, we can no more think about anything 
without a material image than we can live without 
breathing. And by the law of association the mate- 
rial image calls the mental idea up, and vice versa. 
Omnipresence, to almost the whole world, means 
nothing. Has God superficial area? If not, when 
we repeat the word we think of the extended earth, 
that is alL 



62 world's religious congresses. 

"As we find that somehow or other, by the laws 
of our constitution, we have got to associate our 
ideas of infinity with the image of a blue sky or a 
sea, some cover the idea of holiness with an image 
of a church or a mosque, or a cross. The Hindus 
have associated the ideas of holiness, purity, truth, 
omnipresence, and all other ideas with different 
images and forms ; but with this difference: Some 
devote their whole lives to their idol of a church and 
never rise higher, because with them religion means 
an intellectual assent to certain doctrines and doing 
good to their fellows. The whole religion of the 
Hindu is centered in realization. Man is to become 
divine, realizing the divine, and therefore idol or 
temple, or church or books, are only the supports, 
the helps, of his spiritual childhood; but on and on 
man must progress. 

"He must not stop anywhere. 'External wor- 
ship, material worship,' says the Vedas, ' is the low- 
est stage; struggling to rise high, mental prayer is 
the next stage; but the highest stage is when the 
Lord has been realized.' Mark the same earnest 
man who was kneeling before the idol tell you, 
' Him the sun can not express, nor the moon, nor the 
stars; the lightning can not express him, nor the 
fire; through him they all shine.' He does not abuse 
the image or call it sinful. He recognizes in it a 
necessary stage of his life. 'The child is father of 
the man.' Would it be right for the old man to say 
that childhood is a sin, or youth a sin ? JSTor is it 
compulsory in Hinduism. 

" If a man can realize his divine nature with the 



A EELIOIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 63 

help of an image, would it be right to call it a sin ? 
Nor, even when he has passed that stage, should he 
call it an error. To the Hindu, man is not travel- 
ing from error to truth, but from truth to truth, 
from lower to higher truth. To him all the religions, 
from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, 
mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp 
and realize the infinite, each determined by the con- 
ditions of its birth and association, and each of these 
mark a stage of progress, and every soul is a young 
eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and 
more strength till it reaches the glorious sun." 

Concluding, he said : "If there is ever to be a uni- 
versal religion it must be one which will hold no 
location in place or time; which will be infinite, like 
the God it will preach; whose sun shines upon the 
followers of Krishna or Christ, saints or sinners, 
alike; which will not be the Brahmin or Buddhist, 
Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all 
these, and still have infinite space for development; 
which in its catholicity will embrace in its infinite 
arms and find a place for every human being, from 
the lowest groveling man, from the brute, to the 
highest mind towering almost above humanity and 
making society stand in awe and doubt his human 
nature. 

"It will be a religion which will have no place for 
persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will 
recognize a divinity in every man or woman, and 
whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be cen- 
tered in aiding humanity to realize its divine nature. 



64 world's religious congresses. 

"Asoka's council was a council of the Buddhist 
faith. Akbar's, though more to the purpose, was 
only a parlor meeting. It was reserved for America 
to proclaim to all quarters of the globe that the Lord 
is in every religion. 

" May he who is the Brahma of the Hindus, the 
Ahura Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of 
the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father 
in heaven of the Christians, give strength to you to 
carry out your noble idea. 

"The star arose in the east; it traveled steadily 
toward the west, sometimes dimmed and sometimes 
effulgent, till it made a circuit of the world, and 
now it is ngain rising on the very horizon of the east, 
the borders of the Tasifu, a thousand-fold more 
effulgent than it ever was before. Hail, Columbia, 
motherland of liberty! It has been given to thee, 
who never dipped hand iu neighbor's blood, who 
never found out that shortest way of becoming rich 
by robbing one's neighbors — it has been given to 
thee to march on in the vanguard of civilization with 
the flag of harmony." 

ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY. 

The chairman in introducing Joseph Cook re- 
ferred to the undoubted quality of his orthodoxy; 
and on this ground his statement of ' ' the certainties 
of religion ' ' may be introduced into this'comparison. 
His address has been very generally remarked upon, 
and often severely criticised; but the fact remains 
to the credit of Joseph Cook that, in its main 
statements, it stands out as a frank and manly dec- 




RT.-REV. REUCHI SHIBATA, 

High Priest of Zhikko Sect of Shintoism, Japan. 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. . 65 

laration of what Protestant orthodoxy is committed 
to by creed and sermon; unnecessarily dramatic, it 
may be, and too much in the nature of challenge to 
suit the spirit of the occasion, but honest and clear: 

"It is no more wonderful that we should live 
again than that we should live at all. It is less 
wonderful that we should continue to live than that 
we have begun to live; and even the most deter- 
mined and superficial skeptic knows £hat we have 
begun. On the faces of this polyglot international 
audience I seem to see written, as I once saw 
chiseled on the marble above the tomb of the great 
Emperor Akbar in the land of the Ganges, the 
hundred names of God. 

"Let us beware how we lightly assert that we are 
glad that those names are one. How many of us 
are ready for immediate, total, irreversible self- sur- 
render to God as both Saviour and Lord? Only such 
of us as are thus ready can call ourselves in any 
deep sense religious. I care not what name you 
give to God if you mean by him a spirit omnipres- 
ent, eternal, omnipotent, infinite in holiness and 
every other operation. Who is ready for coopera- 
tion with such a God in life and death and beyond 
death? Only he who is thus ready is religious. 
William Shakespeare is supposed to have known 
something of human nature, and certainly was not 
a theological partisan. JSTow Shakespeare, you will 
remember, in ' The Tempest, ' tells you of two char- 
acters who conceived for each other supreme affec- 
tion as soon as they met. ' At the first glance they 
have changed eyes,' he says. The truly religious 

5 



66 world's religious congresses. 

man is one who has 'changed eyes' with God under 
some one or another of his hundred names. It follows 
from this definition of religion, and as a certainty 
dependent on the unalterable nature of things, that 
only he who has changed eyes with God can look into 
his face in peace. A religion of delight in God, not 
merely as Saviour, but as Lord also, is scientifically 
known to be a necessity to the peace of the soul, 
whether we.call God by this name or the other, 
whether we speak of him in the dialect of this or 
that of the four continents, or this or that of the 
10,000 isles of the sea. 

"What is the distinction between morality and 
religion, and how can the latter be shown by the 
scientific method to be a necessity to the peace of 
the soul \ And now, though I do not understand 
morality and the philanthropies, I purpose to speak 
of the strategic certainties of religion from the 
point of view of comparative religion. First, from 
the very center of the human heart and in the pres- 
ence of all the hundred names of God, conscience 
demands that what ought to be, be chosen by the 
will, and it demands this universally. Conscience is 
that faculty within us which tastes intentions. A 
man does unquestionably know whether he means 
to be mean, and he inevitably feels mean when he 
knows that he means to be mean. If we say to that 
still, small voice we call conscience, that^proclaims 
'thou oughtest,' 'I will not,' there is lack of 
peace in us, and until only we say 'I will,' and do 
like to say it, there is no harmony within our souls. 
The delight in saying ' I will ' to the still, small 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 67 

voice 'thou ouglitest' is religion. Merely calcu- 
lating, selfish obedience to that still, small voice 
saves no man. 

." This is the first commandment of absolute sci- 
ence: ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy Gfod with all 
thy mind, and might, and heart, and strength.' 
When Shakespeare 1 s two characters met, curiosity 
as to each other's qualities did not constitute the 
changing of eyes. That mighty capacity which 
exists in human nature to give forth a supreme 
affection was not the changing of eyes. Let us not 
mistake a capacity of religion which every man has 
for religion itself. We must not only have a capac- 
ity to love God, we must have adoration of God; 
and half the loose, limp, unscientific liberalisms of 
the world mistake mere admiration for adoration. 
It is narrowness to refuse mental hospitality for 
any single truth; but we, assembled in the name of 
science, in the name of every grave purpose, have 
an international breadth, and what we purpose to 
promote is such a self-surrender to God as shall 
amount to delight in all known duty and make us 
affectionately and irreversibly choose God under 
some one of his names — I care not what the name 
is if you mean by it all the Bible means by the word 
' God' — choose him not as Saviour only but as God 
also, not as Lord only but as Saviour also. 

"But choice in relation to persons means love. 
What we choose we love; but conscience reveals a 
holy person, the author of the moral law, and con- 
science demands that this law should not only be 
obeyed but loved, and that the holy person should 



68 world's religious congresses. 

be not only obeyed but loved. This is the unalter- 
able demand of an unalterable portion of our nature. 
As personalities, therefore, must keep company 
with this part of our nature and with its demands 
while we exist in this world and in the next, the 
love of God by man is inflexibly required by the 
very nature of things. Conscience draws an unal- 
terable distinction between loyalty and disloyalty 
to the ineffable, holy person whom the moral law 
reveals, and between the obedience of slavishness 
and that of delight. Only the latter is obedience to 
conscience. 

"Religion is the obedience of affectionate glad- 
ness. Morality is the obedience of selfish slavish- 
ness. Only religion, therefore, and not mere 
morality, can harmonize the soul with the nature of 
things. A delight in obedience is not only a part 
of religion, but is necessary to peace in God's pres- 
ence. A religion consisting in the obedience of 
gladness is, therefore, scientifically known to be 
according to the nature of things. It will not be 
/to-morrow or the day after that these propositions 
will cease to be scientifically certain. Out of them 
multitudinous inferences flow as Niagaras from the 
brink of God's palm. Demosthenes once made the 
remark that every address should begin with an 
incontrovertible proposition. Now it is a certainty, 
and my topic makes my key-note a word of cer- 
tainty, that a little while ago we were not in the 
world and a little while hence we shall be here no 
longer. Lincoln, Garfield, Seward, Grant, Beecher, 
Gough, Emerson, Longfellow, Tennyson, Lord 



A KELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. b9 

Beaconsfield, George Eliot, Carlyle — I know not 
how many Mahomets — are gone, and we are going. 
These are certainties that will endure in the four 
continents and on the isles of the sea — 

Till the heavens are old, and the stars are cold, 
And the leaves of the judgment book unfold. 

" The world expects to hear from us this afternoon 
no drivel, but something lit to be jjrofessed face to 
face with the crackling artillery of the science of 
our time. I know I am going hence, and I know I 
wish to go in peace. Now, I hold that it is a cer- 
tainty, and a certainty founded on troth absolutely 
self-evident, that there are three things from which 
I can never escape — my conscience, my God, and 
my record of sin in an irreversible past. How am I 
to be harmonized with that unescapable environ- 
ment? Here is Lady Macbeth. See how she rubs 
her hands — 

Out, damned spot! Will these hands ne'er be clean? 

All the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten this little hand. 

And her husband, in a similar mood, says: 

This red right hand, it would the multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
making the green one red. 

"What religion can wash Lady Macbeth' s red 
right hand ? That is a question I propose to the 
four continents and all the isles of the sea. 
Unless you can answer that, you have not come 
here with a serious purpose to a parliament of 
religions. 

" I speak now to that branch of skeptics which is 
not represented here, and I ask who can wash Lady 



70 world's keligious congresses. 

Macbeth' s red right hand, and their silence or their 
responses are as inefficient as a fishing-rod would be 
to span this vast lake or the Atlantic. 

" I turn to Mohammedanism. Can you wash our 
red right hands 2 I turn to Confucianism and 
Buddhism. Can you wash our red right hands? 
So help me God, I mean to ask a question this after- 
noon that shall go in some hearts across the seas 
and to the antipodes, and I ask it in the name of 
what I hold to be absolutely self-evident truth, 
that unless a man is washed from the old sin and the 
guilt of mankind he can not be at peace in the pres- 
ence of infinite holiness. 

"Old and blind Michael Angelo in the Vatican 
used to go to the torso, so called — a fragment of the 
art of antiquity — and he would feel along the mar- 
velous lines chiseled in bygone ages, and tell his 
pupils that thus and thus the study should be com- 
pleted. I turn to every faith on earth except Chris- 
tianity and I find every such faith a torso. I beg par- 
don. The occasion is too grave for mere courtesy and 
nothing else. Some of the faiths of the world are 
marvelous as far as they go, but if they were com- 
pleted along the lines of the certainties of the re- 
ligions themselves they would go up and up and 
up to an assertion of the necessity of the new purpose 
to deliver the soul from a life of sin, and of atone- 
ment made of God's grace, to deliver the soul from 
guilt. 

" Take the ideas which have produced the torsos 
of the earthly faiths and you will have a universal 
religion, under some of the names of God, and it 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 71 

will be a harmonious outline with Christianity. 
There is no j)eace anywhere in the universe for a 
soul with bad intentions, and there ought not to be. 
Ours is a transitional age, and we are told we 
are all sons of God; and so w T e are, in a natural 
sense, but not in a moral sense. We are all capa- 
ble of changing eyes with God, and until we do 
change eyes with him it is impossible for us to face 
him in peace. No transition in life or death or 
beyond death will ever deliver us from the necessity 
of good intentions to the peace of the soul with its 
environments, nor from exposure to penalty for 
deliberately bad intentions. I hold that we not 
only can not escape from conscience and God and 
our records of sins, but that it is a certainty, and a 
strategic certainty, that except Christianity there 
is no religion under heaven or among men that 
effectively provides for the peace of the soul by its 
harmonization with this environment." 

Here also should be cited the equally plain and 
emphatic declaration of Prof. W. C. Wilkinson of 
Chicago University, who concluded an ■ extended 
discussion of the ' ' Attitude of Christianity tow r ard 
Other Religions 1 ' as follows: 

"It is much if a religion, such as the Bible thus 
teaches Christianity to be, leaves us any chance at 
all for entertaining hope concerning those remaining 
to the last involved in the prevalence of false 
religion surrounding them. But chance there 
seems indeed to be of hope justified by Christianity, 
for some among these unfortunate men. Peter, the 



72 world's religious congresses. 

straightened Peter, the one apostle perhaps most 
inclined to be unalterably Jewish, he it was who, 
having been hitherto specially instructed, said: 

" ' Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of 
persons, but in every nation he that feareth him 
and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him.' 

' ' To fear God first, and then also to work right- 
eousness, these are the traits characterizing ever and 
everywhere the man acceptable to God. But evi- 
dently to fear God is not, in the idea of Christianity, 
to worship another than he. It will accordingly 
be in degree as a man escapes the ethnic religion 
dominant about him, and rises — not by means of 
it, but in spite of it — into the transcending element 
of the true divine worship, that the man will be 
acceptable to God. 

' ' Of any ethnic religion, therefore, can it be said 
that it is a true religion, only not perfect ? Chris- 
tianity says no. Christianity speaks words of unde- 
fined, unlimited hope concerning those, some of 
those, who shall never have heard of Christ. These 
words Christians, of course, will hold and cherish 
according to their inestimable value. But let us 
not mistake them as intended to bear any relation 
whatever to the erring religions of mankind. Those 
religions the Bible nowhere represents as pathetic 
and partly successful gropings after God. They are 
one and all represented as groping downward, not 
groping upward. According to Christianity they 
hinder, they do not help. Their adherents' hold 
on them is like the blind grasping of drowning men 
on roots or rocks that only tend to keep them to the 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 73 

bottom of the river. The truth that is in the false 
religion may help, but it will be the truth, not the 
false religion. 

"According to Christianity the false religion exerts 
all its force to choke and to kill the truth that is 
in it. Hence the historic degeneration represented 
in the first chapter of Romans as effecting false 
religions in general. If they were upward reachings 
they would grow better and better. If, as Paul 
teaches, they in fact grow worse and worse, it must 
be because they are downward reachings. The 
indestructible instinct to worship, that is in itself a 
saving power. Carefully guarded, carefully culti- 
vated, it may even save. But the worshiping 
instinct, misused or disused, that is, depraved to 
idolatry or extinguished in atheism — ' held down, ' 
as Paul graphically expresses it — is in swift process 
of becoming an irresistible destroying power. The 
light that is in the soul turns swiftly into darkness. 
The instinct to worship lifts Godward. The issue 
of that instinct, its abuse in idolatry, its disuse in 
atheism, is evil, only evil, and that continually. 

"The attitude, therefore, of Christianity toward 
religions other than itself is an attitude of universal, 
absolute, eternal, unappeasable hostility, while 
toward all men, everywhere, the adherents of false 
religion by no means excepted, its attitude is an 
attitude of grace, mercy, peace, for whosoever will. 
How many may be found that will is a problem 
which Christianity leaves unsolved. Most welcome 
hints and suggestions, however, it affords, encour- 
aging Christians joyfully and gratefully to entertain 



74 world's religious congresses. 

on behalf of the erring that relieved and sym- 
pathetic sentiment which the poet has taught us 
to call 'the larger hope.' " 

More generous and inviting is the "Message of 
Christianity to Other Religions," as voiced by the 
Rev. James S. Dennis, D. D., secretary of the Pres- 
byterian Board of Missions. He gives the message 
in a series of "code words," as he calls them: 

"The initial word which we place in this signal 
code of Christianity is fatherhood. This may have 
a strange sound to some ears, but to the Christian 
it is full of sweetness and dignity. It simply means 
that the creative act of God, so far as our human 
family is concerned, was done in the spirit of fatherly 
love and goodness. He created us in his likeness, 
and to express this idea of spiritual resemblance and 
tender relationship the symbolical term of father- 
hood is used. When Christ taught us to pray ' Our 
Father ' he gave us a lesson which transcends human 
philosophy, and has in it so much of the height and 
depth of divine feeling that human reason has 
hardly dared to receive, much less to originate, the 
conception. 

' ' A second word which is representative in the 
Christian message is brotherhood. This exists in two 
senses — there is the universal brotherhood of man 
to man, as children of one father, in whose likeness 
the whole family is created, and the spiritual broth- 
erhood of union in Christ. Here again is the sug- 
gestion of love as the rule and sign of human as well 
as Christian fellowship. The world has drifted far 



A KELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 75 

away from this ideal of brotherhood; it has been 
repudiated in some quarters even in the name of 
reTigion, and it seems clear that it will never be 
fully recognized and exemplified except as the 
Spirit of Christ assumes its sway over the hearts of 
men. 

"The next code word of Christianity is redemp- 
tion. We use it here in the sense of a purpose on 
G-od's part to deliver man from sin, and to make a 
universal provision for that end, which, if rightly 
used, insures the result. I need not remind you 
that this purpose is conceived in love. God, as 
Redeemer, has taken a gracious attitude toward man 
from the beginning of history, and he is ' not far 
from every one ' in the immanence and omnipresence 
of his love. Redemption is a world-embracing term. 
It is not limited to any age or class. Its potentiality 
is world-wide; its efficiency is unrestrained except 
as man limits it; its application is determined by 
the sovereign wisdom of God, itsAuthor, who deals 
with each individual as a possible candidate for 
redemption, and decides his destiny in accordance 
with his spiritual attitude toward Christ. 

"Where Christ is unknown God still exercises 
his sovereignty, although he has been pleased to 
maintain a significant reserve as to the possibility, 
extent, and spiritual tests of redemption where trust 
is based on God's mercy in general rather than upon 
his mercy as specially revealed in Christ. We know 
from his word that Christ' s sacrifice is infinite. God 
can apply its saving benefits to one who intelligently 
accepts it in faith, or to an infant who receives its 



76 world's religious congresses. 

benefits as a sovereign gift, or to one who, not hav- 
ing known of Christ, so casts himself upon God's 
mercy that divine wisdom sees good reason to exer- 
cise the prerogative of compassion and apply to the 
soul the saving power of the great sacrifice. 

"Another cardinal idea in the Christian system 
is incarnation — God clothing himself in human 
form and coming into living touch with mankind. 
This he did in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It 
is a mighty mystery, and Christianity would never 
dare assert it except as God has taught its truth. 
Granted the i:>urpose of God to reveal himself in 
visible form to man, and he must be free to choose 
his own method. He did not consult human reason. 
He did not seek the permission of ordinary laws. 
He came in his spiritual chariot, in the glory of the 
supernatural, but he entered the realm of human 
life through the humble gateway of nature. He 
came not only to reveal God, but to bring him into 
contact with human life. He came to assume per- 
manent relations to the race. His brief life among 
us on earth was for a purpose, and when that 
was accomplished, still retaining his humanity, he 
ascended to assume his kingly dominions in the 
heavens. 

"We are brought now to another fundamental 
truth in Christian teaching — the mysterious doc- 
trine of atonement. Sin is a fact which is indis- 
putable. It is universally recognized and acknowl- 
edged. It is its own evidence. It is, moreover, a 
barrier between man and his God. The divine holi- 
ness and sin, with its loathsomeness, its rebellion, 



A KELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 77 

its horrid degradation, and its hopeless ruin, can not 
coalesce in any system of moral government. God 
can not tolerate sin, or temporize with it, or make a 
place for it in his presence. He can not parley with 
it; he must punish it. He can not treat with it; he 
must try it at the bar. He can not overlook it; he 
must overcome it. He can not give it a moral status; 
he must visit it with the condemnation it deserves. 

" Atonement is God's marvelous method of vindi- 
cating, once for all, before the universe, his eternal 
attitude toward sin, by the voluntary self assump- 
tion, in the spirit of sacrifice, of its penalty. This 
he does in the person of Jesus Christ, who came as 
God incarnate upon this sublime mission. The facts 
of Christ's birth, life, death, and resurrection take 
their place in the realm of veritable history, and 
the moral value and propitiatory efficacy of his per- 
fect obedience and sacrificial death in a representa- 
tive capacity become a mysterious element of limit- 
less worth in the process of readjusting the relation 
of the sinner to his God. 

"Christ is recognized by God as a substitute. 
The merit of hijs obedience and the exalted dignity 
of his sacrifice are both available to faith. The sin- 
ner, humble, penitent, and conscious of un worthi- 
ness, accepts Christ as his redeemer, his intercessor, 
his saviour, and simply believes in him, trusting in 
his assurances and promises, based as they are upon 
his atoning intervention, and receives from God, as 
the gift of sovereign love, all the benefits of Christ's 
mediatorial work. This is God's way of reaching 
the goal of pardon and reconciliation. It is his way 



78 

of being himself just and yet accompli shing the 
justification of the sinner. Here again we have the 
mystery of love in its most intense form and the 
mystery of wisdom in its most august exemplifica- 
tion. 

' ' This is the heart of the gospel . It throbs with 
mysterious love. It pulsates with ineffable throes 
of divine feeling; it bears a vital relation to the 
whole scheme of government; it is in its hidden 
activities beyond the scrutiny of human reason; but 
it sends the life-blood coursing through history and 
it gives to Christianity its superb vitality and its 
undying vigor. It is because Christianity eliminates 
sin from the problem that its solution is complete 
and final. 

" We pass now to another word which is of vital 
importance — it is character. God' s own attitude to 
the sinner being settled, and the problem of moral 
government solved, the next matter which presents 
itself is the personality of the individual man. It 
must be purified, transformed into the spiritual like- 
ness of Christ, trained for immortality. It must be 
brought into harmony with the ethical standards of 
Christ. This Christianity insists upon, and for the 
accomplishment of this end it is gifted with an influ- 
ence and impulse, a potency and winsomeness, an 
inspiration and helpfulness, which is full of spirit- 
ual mastery over the soul. Christianity uplifts, 
transforms, and eventually transfigures the personal 
character. It is a transcendent school of incompar- 
able ethics. It honors the rugged training of disci- 
pline; it uses it freely but tenderly. It accomplishes 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 79 

its purpose by exacting obedience, by teaching sub- 
mission, by helping to self-control, by insisting 
upon practical righteousness as a rule of life, and by 
introducing the golden rule as the law of contact 
and duty between man and man. 

"In vital connection with character is a word of 
magnetic impulse and unique glory which gives to 
Christianity a sublime practical power in history. 
It is service. There is a forceful meaning in the 
double influence of Christianity over the inner life 
and the outward ministry of its followers. Christ, 
its founder, glorified service and lifted it in his own 
experience to the dignity of sacrifice. In the light 
of Christ's example, service becomes an honor, a 
privilege, and a moral triumph ; it is consummated 
and crowned in sacrifice. 

"Christianity, receiving its lesson from Christ, 
subsidizes character in the interest of service. It 
lays its noblest fruitage of personal gifts and spirit- 
ual culture upon the altar of philanthropic sacrifice. 
It is unworthy of its name if it does not reproduce 
this spirit of its master; only by giving itself to 
benevolent ministry, as Christ gave himself for the 
world, can it vindicate its origin. Christianity 
recognizes no worship which is altogether divorced 
from work for the weal of others; it indorses no 
religious professions which are unmindful of the 
obligations of service; it allows itself to be tested 
not simply by the purity of its motives, but by the 
measure of its sacrifices. The crown and goal of its 
followers is, ' Well done, good and faithful servant.' 

' ' One other word completes the code. It is fellow- 



80 world's religious congresses. 

ship. It is a word which breathes the sweetest hope 
and sounds the highest destiny of the Christian. It 
gives the grandest possible meaning to eternity, for 
it suggests that it is to be passed with God. It 
ill amines and transfigures the present, for it brings 
God into it, and places him in living touch with our 
lives, and makes him a helper in our moral struggles, 
our spiritual aspirations,- and our heroic though 
imperfect efforts to live the life of duty. It is solace 
in trouble, consolation in sorrow, strength in weak- 
ness, courage in trial, help in weariness, and cheer 
in loneliness. It becomes an unfailing inspiration 
when human nature, left to its own resources, would 
lie down in despair and die. Fellowship with God 
implies and secures fellowship with each other in a 
mystical spiritual union of Christ with his people, 
and his people with each other. An invisible society 
of regenerate souls, which we call the kingdom of 
God among men, is the result. This has its visible 
product in the organized society of the Christian 
church, which is the chosen and honored instrument 
of God for the conservation and propagation of 
Christianity among men. 

"This, then, is the message which Christianity 
signals to other religions as it greets them to-day: 
Fatherhood, brotherhood, redemption, incarnation, 
atonement, character, service, fellowship." 

If we pause here to compare, we find the Hindu 
looking up to the Almighty and the All-merciful One, 
who was incarnate on earth, as Krishna, and taught 
the love of God for its own sake; believing that the 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 81 

pure in heart see him, and that purity is attained by 
crucifying all selfish desire, and in the constant strug- 
gle to become perfect, even as the Father in heaven 
is perfect. In what that perfection consists is not 
definitely set forth; nor does the means of reaching 
it appear clear, except as a continual struggle, 
through no matter how many conditions of life, to 
rise above selfishness. One might suggest here, that 
however defective this view may be to the intellect 
aspiring to a knowledge of the origins and issues of 
life and death, yet, as a practical religion, it teaches 
the acknowledgment of the divine in shunning the 
evils of self-love as sins against him. And here one 
is reminded of the voice of Jehovah, by the prophet, 
' ' If a man turn from the evil he hath done and doeth 
righteousness he shall live," and of the word in the 
gospel, that "whosoever will do his will shall 
know," and "he that hath my commandments and 
keepeth them, he it is that loveth me," and "he 
that is not against us is for us." 

Orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, sees 
the great fact of sin as a bar to the love of God, and 
finds in the gospel no hope for any until the old sin 
and the guilt of mankind is blotted out from the 
mind of God by a substitutional sacrifice, accepted by 
faith on the part of the sinner. It sees in Chris- 
tianity only an attitude of absolute, eternal, and 
unappeasable hostility toward other religions, while 
it holds out to all men grace and mercy, and pleads 
for the acceptance of redemption and atonement, 
through faith in the sacrifice of Christ as acceptable 
with God, with inclination toward a " larger hope." 



82 world's religious congresses. 

liberal christianity. 

Of course there is the broader view, with whicli all 
are familiar in this day, as voiced by Dr. Lyman 
Abbott, who said, " Religion is essential to human- 
ity," the "religion" that is "the mother of all re- 
ligions, not the child," which he defined as the 
power to apprehend the infinite and the eternal. 

Tracing some of the ways in which the children of 
God are necessitated to seek after him, Doctor Abbott 
concludes: 

' ' Thus we get out of religion religions — religions 
that vary with one another, according as curiosity, 
or fear, or hope, or the ethical element, or the per- 
sonal reverence predominates. Religious curiosity 
wants to know about the infinite and eternal, and it 
gives us creeds and theologies; the religion of fear 
gives us the sacrificial system, with its atonements 
and propitiations; the religion of hope expects some 
reward or recompense from the great Infinite, and 
expresses itself in services and gifts, with the expec- 
tation of rewards here or in some Elysium hereafter. 
Then there is the religion which, although it can 
never learn the nature of the law-giver, still goes on 
trying to understand the nature of his laws; and, 
finally, the religion which more or less clearly sees 
behind all this that there is One who is the ideal of 
humanity, the infinite and eternal Ruler of human- 
ity, and therefore reveres and worships, and last of 
all learns to love. 

"If, in this very brief summary, I have carried you 
with me, you will see that the object of man's 
search is not merely religion; he is seeking to know 



A EELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 83 

the infinite and the eternal, not merely the priests 
and the hierarchies, not merely the men and women, 
with their services, and their rituals, and their 
prayer-books, but the whole current and tendency 
of human life is a search for the infinite and the 
divine. All science, all art, all sociology, all busi- 
ness, all government, as well as all worship, is in 
the last analysis an endeavor to comprehend the 
meaning of the great words, honesty, justice, truth, 
pity, mercy, love. In vain does the atheist or 
the agnostic try to stop our search to know the 
infinite and eternal; in vain does he tell us it is a 
useless quest. Still we press on, and must X3ress on. 
The incentive is in ourselves, and nothing can blot it 
out of us and still leave us men and women. 

"God made us out of himself and God calls us 
back to himself. It W( uld be easier to kill the 
appetite of man and let us feed by merely shoveling 
in carbon as into a furnace; it would be easier to 
blot ambition out of man and to consign him to end- 
less and nerveless content; easier to blot love out of 
man and banish him to live the life of a eunuch in 
the wilderness than to blot out of the soul of man 
those desires and aspirations which knit him to the 
infinite and the eternal, give him love for his fellow- 
man and reverence for God. In vain does the 
philosopher of the barnyard say to the egg, ' You 
are made of egg; you always were an egg; you 
always will be an egg; don't. try to be anything but 
an egg^ The chicken pecks and pecks until he 
breaks the shell and comes out to the sunlight of 
the world. 



84 

"We welcome here to-day, in this most cosmo- 
politan city of the most cosmopolitan race on the 
globe, the representatives of all the various forms 
of religious life from east to west and north to 
south. We are glad to welcome them. We are 
glad to believe that they, as we, have been seeking 
to know something more and better of the divine 
from which we issue, of the divine to which we 
are returning. We are glad to hear the message 
they have to bring to us. We are glad to know what 
they have to tell us, but what we are gladdest of all 
about is that we can tell them what we have found 
in our search, and that we have found the Christ. 

" I do not stand here as an exponent, the apolo- 
gist, or the defender of Christianity. In it there 
have been the blemishes and the marks of human 
handiwork. It has been too intellectual, too much 
a religion of creeds. It has been too fearful, too 
much a religion of sacrifices. It has been too self- 
ishly hopeful; there has been too much a desire 
of reward here or hereafter. It has been too little 
a religion of unselfish service and unselfish reverence. 
No! It is not Christianity that we want to tell our 
brethren across the sea about; it is the Christ. 

"What is it that this universal hunger of the 
human race seeks % Is it not these things — a better 
understanding of our moral relations, one to an- 
other, a better understanding of what we are and 
what we mean to be, that we may fashion ourselves 
according to the idea of the ideal being in our 
nature, a better appreciation of the infinite one who 
is behind all phenomena, material and spiritual ? Is 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 85 

it not more health and added strength and clearer 
light in our upward tendency to our everlasting 
Father s arms and home ?: Are not these the things 
that most we need in the world \ We have found 
the Christ, and loved him and revered him and ac- 
cepted him, for nowhere else, in no other prophet, 
have we found the moral relations of men better 
represented than in the golden rule, c Do unto 
others that which you would have others do unto 
you.' We do not think that he furnishes the only 
ideal the world has ever had. We recognize the 
voice of God in all prophets and in all time. But 
we do think we have found in this Christ, in his 
patience, in his courage, in his heroism, in his self- 
sacrifice, in his unbounded mercy and love an idea 
that transcends all other ideals written by the pen 
of poet, painted by the brush of artist, or graven 
into the life of human history. 

"We do not think that God has spoken only in 
Palestine and to the few in that narrow province. 
We do not think he has been vocal in Christendom 
and dumb everywhere else. No ! We believe that 
he is a speaking God in all times and in all ages. 
But we believe no other revelation transcends and 
none other equals that which he has made to man in 
the one transcendental human life that was lived 
eighteen centuries ago in Palestine. And we think 
we find in Christ one thing that we have not been 
able to find in any other of the manifestations of the 
religious life of the world. All religions are the 
result of man's seeking after God. If what I have 
portrayed to you this morning so imperfectly has 



86 wokld's religious congresses. 

any truth in it the whole human race seeks to know 
its eternal and divine Father; the message of the 
Incarnation — that is the glad tidings we have to 
give to Africa, to Asia, to China, to the isles of the sea. 
c ' The everlasting Father is also seeking the children 
who are seeking him. He is not an unknown, hid- 
ing himself behind a veil impenetrable. He is not a 
being dwelling in the eternal silence; he is a speak- 
ing, revealing, incarnate God. He is not an abso- 
lute justice, sitting on the throne of the universe 
and bringing before him imperfect, sinful man and 
judging him with the scales of unerring justice; he 
is a father coming into human life and coming into 
one transcendental human life, coming into all 
human life for all time. Perhaps we have some- 
times misrepresented our own faith respecting this 
Christ. Perhaps, in our metaphysical definitions, 
we have sometimes been too anxious to be accurate 
and too little anxious to be true. He himself has 
said it. He is a door. We do not stand merely to 
look at the door for the beauty of the carving upon 
it. We push the door open and go in. Through 
that door God enters into human life; through that 
door humanity enters into the divine life; man seek- 
ing after God, the incarnate God seeking after man; 
the end in that great future after life's troubled 
dream shall be o'er, and we shall awake satisfied 
because we awake in his likeness." , 

BUDDHISM. 

Buddhism rivals Christianity in the number and 
characteristic differences of its sects; but with 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 87 

better reason in the intent of its original teacher, 
according to Banriu Yatsabuchi of Japan, from 
whose paper we quote the following: 

"Buddhism is the doctrine taught by Buddha 
Sakyamuni. The word Buddha is Sanscrit, and in 
the Japanese it is Satoru, which means under- 
standing, or comprehension. It has three meanings 
— self -comprehension, to let others comprehend, and 
perfect comprehension. When wisdom and human- 
ity are attained thoroughly by one he may be 
called Buddha, which means perfect comprehension. 
In Buddhism we have Buddha as our Saviour, the 
spirit incarnate of perfect self-sacrifice and divine 
compassion, and the embodiment of all that is pure 
and good. Although Buddha was not a creator and 
had no power to destroy the law of the universe, he 
had the power of knowledge to know the origin of 
nature and end of each revolving manifestation of 
the universal phenomena. He suppressed the crav- 
ing and passions of his mind until he could reach 
no higher spiritual and moral plane. As every 
object of the universe is one part of the truth, 
of course it may become Buddha, according to a 
natural reason. . . . 

"The complete doctrines of Buddha, who spent 
fifty years in elaborating them, were preached pre- 
cisely and carefully, and their meanings are so pro- 
found and deep that I can not explain at this time 
an infinitesimal part of them. His preaching was 
a compass to point out the direction to the be- 
wildered spiritual world. He taught his disciples 
just as the doctor cures his patient, by giving sev- 



88 world's religious congresses. 

eral medicines according to the different cases. 
Twelve divisions of Sutras and 84,000 laws made to 
meet the different cases of Buddha's patients in the 
suffering world are minute classifications of Bud- 
dha' s teachings. Why are there so many sects and 
preachings in Buddhism? Simply because of the 
differences in human character. His teaching may 
be divided under four heads: Thinking about the 
general state of the world; thinking about the indi- 
vidual character simply; conquering the passions; 
giving up the life to the sublime first principle. 

"There is no room for censure because Buddhism 
has many sects which were founded on Buddha's 
teachings, because Buddha considered it best to 
preach according to the spiritual needs of his hear- 
ers and leave to them the choice of any particular 
set. We are not allowed to censure other sects, 
because the teaching of each guides us all to the 
same place at last. The necessity for separating the 
many sects arose from the fact that the people of 
different countries w T ere not alike in dispositions 
and could not accept the same truths in the same 
way as others. One teaching of Buddha contains 
many elements which are to be distributed and sep- 
arated; but as the object as taught by Buddha is 
one, we teach the ignorant according to the condi- 
tions that arise through our different sects." 

The teachings of Buddhism were more particu- 
larly set forth in a paper by H. R. H. Prince Chan- 
dradat Chudhadharn, on " The Buddhism of Siam," 
explaining that all things in the universe are made 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 89 

up from Dharma, defined as "the essence of na- 
ture," and presenting the three following phenom- 
ena, namely: 1st, the accomplishment of eternal 
evolution; 2d, sorrow and suffering, according to 
human ideas; and 3d, a separate power uncontrol- 
lable by the desire of man, and not belonging to 
man. He continued: 

"Man, who is an aggregate of Dharma, is, how- 
ever, unconscious of the fact, because his will 
either receives impressions and becomes modified 
by mere visible things, or because his spirit has 
become identified with apjjearances, such as man, 
animal, deva, or any other beings that are also but 
modified spirits and matter. Man becomes, there- 
fore, conscious of separate existence. But all out- 
ward forms, man himself included, are made to live 
or to last for a short space of time only. They are 
soon to be destroyed and recreated again and again 
by an eternal evolution. He is first body and spirit, 
but, through ignofance of the fact that all is 
Dharma, and of that which is good and evil, his 
spirit may become impressed with evil temptation. 
Thus, for instance, he may desire certain things 
with that force peculiar to a tiger, whose spirit is 
modified by craving for lust and anger. In such a 
case he will be continually adopting, directly or 
indirectly, in his own life, the wills and acts of that 
tiger, and thereby is himself that animal in spirit 
and soul. Yet outwardly he appears to be a man, 
and is as yet unconscious of the fact that his spirit 
has become endowed with the cruelties of the tiger. 

' ' If this state continues until the body be dissolved 



90 

or changed into other matter; be dead, as we say, 
that same spirit which has been endowed with the 
cravings of lust and anger of a tiger, of exactly the 
same nature and feelings as those that have 
appeared in the body of the man before his death, 
may reappear now to find itself in the body of a 
tiger, suitable to its nature. Thus, so long as man 
is ignorant of that nature of Dharma, and fails to 
identify that nature, he continues to receive dif- 
ferent impressions from beings around him in this 
universe, thereby sufferings, pains, sorrows, disap- 
pointments of all kinds, death. 

"If, however, his spirit be impressed with the good 
qualities that are found in a superior being, such as 
the deva, for instance, by adopting in his own life 
the acts and wills of that superior being man 
becomes spiritually that superior being himself, both 
in nature and soul, even while in his present form. 
When death puts an end to his physical body a 
spirit of the very same natufe and quality may 
reappear in the new body of a deva, to enjoy a life 
of happiness not to be compared to anything that is 
known in this world. 

"However, to all beings alike, whether superior or 
inferior to ourselves, death is a suffering. It is, 
therefore, undesirable to be born into any being 
that is a modification of Dharma, to be sooner or 
later, again and again, dissolved by the eternal 
phenomenon of evolution. The only means by 
which we are able to free ourselves from sufferings 
and death is, therefore, to possess a perfect knowl- 
edge of Dharma, and to realize by will and acts that 



A EKLIOI0US SYMPOSIUM. 91 

nature only obtainable by adhering to the precepts 
given by Lord Buddha in the four Noble Truths. 
The consciousness of self-being is a delusion, so 
that, until we are convinced that we ourselves and 
whatever belongs to ourselves is a mere nothing- 
ness, until we have lost the idea or impression that 
we are men, until that idea be completely annihil- 
ated and we have become united to Dliarma, we are 
unable to reach spiritually the state of Nirvana, 
and that is only attained when the bodies dissolve 
both spiritually and physically. So that one 
should cease all petty longing for personal hap- 
piness, and remember that one life is as hollow as 
the other, that all is transitory and unreal. 

"The true Buddhist does not mar the purity of his 
self-denial by lusting after a positive happiness 
which he himself shall enjoy here or hereafter. 
Ignorance of Dharma leads to sin, which leads to 
sorrow; and under these conditions of existence 
each new birth leaves man ignorant and finite still. 
What is to be hoped for is the absolute repose of 
Nirvana, the extinction of our being, nothingness. 
Allow me to give an illustration: A piece of rope is 
thrown in a dark road; a silly man passing by can 
not make out what it is. In his natural ignorance 
the rope appears to be a horrible snake, and imme- 
diately creates in him alarm, fright, and suffering. 
Soon light dwells upon him; he now realizes that 
what he took to be a snake is but a piece of rope. 
His alarm and fright are suddenly at an end; they 
are annihilated, as it were. The man now becomes 
happy and free from the suffering he has just 
experienced through his own folly. 



92 world's religious congresses. 

" It is precisely the same with ourselves, our lives r 
our deaths, our alarms, our cries, our lamentations, 
our disappointments, and all other sufferings. 
They are created by our own ignorance of eternity, 
of the knowledge of Dharma to do away with and 
annihilate all of them. 

" I shall now refer to the four Noble Truths as 
taught by our merciful and omniscient Lord 
Buddha; they point out the path that leads to 
Nirvana, or to the desirable extinction of self. 

" The first noble truth is suffering; it arises from 
birth, old age, illness, sorrow, death, separation, 
and from what is loved, association with what is 
hateful, and, in short, the very idea of self in spirit 
and matters that constitute Dharma. The second 
Noble Truth is the cause of suffering which results 
from ignorance, creating lust for objects of a perish- 
able nature. If the lust be for sensual objects it is 
called, in Pali, Kama Tanha. If it be for supersen- 
sual objects, belonging to the mind but still possess- 
ing a form in the mind, it is called Bhava Tanha. 
If the lust be pure for supersensual objects that 
belong to the mind, but are devoid of all form what- 
ever, it is called Wibhava Tanha. The third Noble 
Truth is the extinction of sufferings, which is 
brought about by the cessation of the three kinds of 
lust, together with their accompanying evils, which 
all result directly from ignorance. The fourth Noble 
Truth is the means of paths that lead to the cessation 
of lusts and other evils. This Noble Truth is divided 
into the following eight paths: Right understand- 
ing, right resolutions, right speech, right acts, right 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 93 

way of earning a livelihood, right efforts, right 
meditation, right state of mind. A few words of 
explanation on these paths may not be out of place: 

" By right understanding is meant proper com- 
prehension, especially in regard to what we call 
sufferings. We should strive to learn the cause of 
our sufferings and the manner to alleviate and even 
to suppress them. We are not to forget that we 
are in this world to suffer; that wherever there is 
pleasure there is pain, and that, after all, pain and 
pleasure only exist according to human ideas. 
y "By right resolutions is meant that it is our 
imperative duty to act kindly to our fellow- creat- 
ures. We are to bear no malice against anybody 
and never seek revenge. We are to understand 
that in reality we exist in flesh and blood only for a 
short time, and that hapx^iness and sufferings are 
transient or idealistic, and therefore we should try 
to control our desires and cravings and endeavor 
to be good and kind toward our fellow-creatures. 

" By right speech is meant that we are always to 
speak the truth, never to incite one's anger toward 
others, but always to speak of things useful, and 
never use harsh words destined to hurt the feelings 
of others. By right acts is meant that we should 
never harm our fellow-creatures, neither steal, take 
life, nor commit adultery. Temperance and celibacy 
are also enjoined. By right way of earning a liveli- 
hood is meant that we are always to be honest and 
never to use wrongful or guilty means to attain an 
end. By right efforts is meant that we are to perse- 
vere in our endeavors to do ^good and to mend our 



94 WORLD'S RELIGIOUS CONGRESSES. 

conduct should we ever have strayed from the path 
of virtue. By right meditation is meant that we 
should always look upon life as being temporary, 
consider our existence as a source of suffering, and 
therefore endeavor always to calm our minds that 
may be excited by the sense of pleasure or pain. 
By right state of mind is meant that we should be 
firm in our belief, and be strictly indifferent both to 
the sense or feeling of pleasure and pain. 

"It would be out of place here to enter into fur- 
ther details on the four Noble Truths; it would 
require too much time. I will, therefore, merely 
summarize their meanings and say that sorrow and 
sufferings are mainly due to ignorance, which 
creates in our minds lust, anger, and other evils. 
The extermination of all sorrow and suffering, and 
of all unhappiness, is attained by the eradication of 
ignorance and its evil consequences, and by replac- 
ing it with cultivation, knowledge, contentment, 
and love. 

"Now comes the question, What is good and 
what is evil? Every act, speech, or thought derived 
from falsehood, or that which is injurious to others, 
is evil. Every act, speech, or thought derived from 
truth, and that which is not injurious to others, is 
good. Buddhism teaches that lust prompts avarice, 
anger creates animosity, ignorance produces false 
ideas. These are called evils because 'they cause 
pain. On the other hand, contentment prompts 
charity, love creates kindness, knowledge produces 
progressive ideas. These are called good because 
they give pleasure. 



A KELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 95 

"The teachings of Buddhism on morals are nu- 
merous, and are divided into three groups of advan- 
tages: The advantage to be obtained in the present 
life, the advantage to be obtained in the future life, 
and the advantage to be obtained in all eternity. 
For each of these advantages there are recommended 
numerous paths to be followed by those who aspire 
to any one of them. I will only quote a few ex- 
amples. To those who aspire to advantages in the 
present life Buddhism recommends diligence, econ- 
omy, expenditure suitable to one's income, and 
association with the good. To those who aspire to 
the advantages of the future life are recommended 
charity, kindness, knowledge of right and wrong. 
To those who wish to enjoy the everlasting advan- 
tages in all eternity are recommended purity of 
conduct, of mind, and of knowledge. 

" Allow me now to say a few words on the duties 
of man toward his wife and family, as preached by 
the Lord. Buddha himself to the lay disciples in dif- 
ferent discourses, or Sutras, as they are called in 
Pali. They belong to the group of advantages of 
present life. A good man is characterized by seven 
qualities. He should not be loaded with faults, he 
should be free from laziness, he should not boast of 
his knowledge, he should be truthful, benevolent, 
content, and should aspire to all that is useful. 

"A husband should honor his wife, never in- 
sult her, never displease her, make her mistress of 
the house, and provide for her. On her part, a wife 
ought to be cheerful toward him when he works, 
entertain his friends and care for his dependents, to 



96 world's religious congresses. 

never do anything he does not wish, to take good 
care of the wealth he has accumulated, not to be 
idle, but always cheerful when at work herself. 

"Parents in old age expect their children to take 
care of them, to do all their work and business, to 
maintain the household, and, after death, to do 
honor to their remains by being charitable. Parents 
help their children by preventing them from doing 
sinful acts, by guiding them in the path of virtue, 
by educating them, by providing them with hus- 
bands and wives suitable to them, by leaving them 
legacies. When poverty, accident, or misfortune 
befalls man, the Buddhist is taught to bear it with 
patience, and if these are brought on by himself it 
is his duty to discover their causes and try, if possi- 
ble, to remedy them. If the causes, however, are 
not to be found here in this life he must account for 
them by the wrongs done in his former existence. 
Temperance is enjoined upon all Buddhists, for 
the reason that the habit of using intoxicating 
things tends to lower the mind to the level of that 
of an idiot, a madman, or an evil spirit. 

" These are some of the doctrines and moralities 
taught by Buddhism, which I hope will give you an 
idea of the scope of the Lord Buddha's teachings. 
In closing this brief paper I earnestly wish you all, 
my brother religionists, the enjoyment of long life, 
happiness, and prosperity." 

The gentle Dharmapala of Ceylon, who won all 
hearts by his refined intelligence, affectionate and 
uniform charity, and his zeal to lift all men out of 



* 



■ 






■ : 






P. C. MOZOOMDAR, 

Brahmo-Somaj, Calcutta, India. 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 97 

gross selfishness, read on several occasions from an 
extended exposition of the teachings and influence 
of Buddhism. We quote here from his address the 
following showing of some points of difference and 
of resemblance between Buddhism and Christianity: 

' ' Max Miiller says : ' When a religion has 
ceased to produce champions, prophets, and mar- 
tyrs, it had ceased to live in the true sense of the 
word, and the decisive battle for the dominion of 
the world would have to be fought out among the 
three missionary religions which are alive — Bud- 
dhism, Mohammedanism and Christianity.' Sir 
William W. Hunter, in his ' Indian Empire ' 
(1893), says: 'The secret of Buddha's success was 
that he brought spiritual deliverance to the people. 
He preached that salvation was equally open to all 
men, and that it must be earned, not by propitiating 
imaginary deities, but by our own conduct. His 
doctrines thns cut away the religious basis of caste, 
and that of the efficiency of the sacrificial ritual, and 
assailed the supremacy of the Brahmans (priests) 
as the mediators between God and man.' Buddha 
taught that sin, sorrow, and deliverance, the state of 
man in this life, in all previous and in all future 
lives, are the inevitable results of his own acts 
(Karma). He thus applied the inexorable law of 
cause and effect to the soul. What a man sows he 
must reap. 

' ' As no evil remains without punishment and no 
good deed without reward, it follows that neither 
priest nor God can prevent each act bearing its own 
consequences. Misery or happiness in this life is 

7 



98 

the unavoidable result of our conduct in a past life, 
and our actions here will determine our happiness 
or misery in the life to come. When any creature 
dies he is -born again, in some higher or lower state 
of existence, according to his merit or demerit. His 
merit or demerit, that is, his character, consists of 
the sum total of his actions in all previous lives. 

" By this great law of Karma Buddha explained 
the inequalities and apparent injustice of man's 
estate in this world as the consequence of acts in 
the past, while Christianity compensates those 
inequalities by rewards in the future. A system in 
which our whole well-being, past, present, and to 
come, depends on ourselves, theoretically, leaves 
little room for the interference, or even existence, 
of a personal God. But the atheism of Buddha 
was a philosophical tenet, which, so far from weak- 
ening the functions of right and wrong, gave them 
new strength from the doctrine of Karma, or the 
metempsychosis of character. To free ourselves 
from the thrall dom of desire and from the fetters of 
selfishness was to attain to the state of the perfect 
disciple in this life and to the everlasting rest after 
death. 

"The great practical aim of Buddha's teaching 
was to subdue the lusts of the flesh and the crav- 
ings of self, and this could only be attained by the 
practice of virtue. In place of rites and sacrifices 
Buddha prescribed a code of practical morality as 
the means of salvation. The four essential features 
of that code were: Reverence to spiritual teachers 
and parents, control over self, kindness to other 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 99 

men, and reverence for the life of all creatures. He 
urged on his disciples that they must not only fol 
low the true path themselves, but that they should 
teach it to all mankind. 

"The life and teachings of Buddha are also begin- 
ning to exercise a new influence on religious thought 
in Europe and America. Buddhism will stand 
forth as the embodiment of the eternal verity that 
as a man sows he .will reap, associated with the 
duties of mastery over se]f and kindness to all men, 
and quickened into a popular religion by the exam- 
ple of a noble and beautiful life. 

"Here are some Buddhist teachings as given in 
the words of Jesus and claimed by Christianity: 

" ' Whosoever cometh to me and heareth my say- 
ings and doeth them, he is like a man which built a 
house and laid the foundation on a rock. 

" 'Why call ye me lord and do not the things 
which I say? 

" ' Judge not, condemn not, forgive. 

"'Love your enemies and do good, hoping for 
nothing again, and your reward shall be great. 

' ' ' Blessed are they that hear the word of God and 
keep it. 

" ' Be ready, for the Son of Man cometh at an hour 
when ye think not. 

' ' ' Sell all that ye have and give it to the poor. 

" ' Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many 
years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. 
But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy 
soul shall be required of thee, then whose shall 
these things be which thou hast provided? 



100 woeld's eeligious congeesses. 

'•' ' The life is more than meat and the body more 
than raiment. Whosoever he be of you that for- 
saketh not all that he hath he can not be my 
disciple. 

' ' ' He that is faithful in that which is least is faith- 
ful in much. 

" ' Whosoever shall save his life shall lose it, and 
whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it. 

" ' For behold the kingdom of God is within you. 

' ' ' There is no man that hath left house or parents, 
or brethren, or wife, or children for the kingdom of 
God's sake who shall not receive manifold more in 
this present time. 

ci ' Take heed to yourselves lest at any time your 
hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunken- 
ness and cares of this life. Watch ye, therefore, and 
pray always.' 

"Here are some Buddhist teachings for compari- 
son: 'Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time. 
Hatred ceases by love. This is an ancient law. Let 
us live happily, not hating those who hate us. 
Among men who hate us, let us live free from 
hatred. Let one overcome anger by love. Let him 
overcome evil by good. Let him overcome the 
greedy by liberality. Let the liar be overcome by 
truth. 

" 'As the bee, injuring not the flower, its color or 
scent, flies away, taking the nectar, so let the wise 
man dwell upon the earth. ' 

" ' Like a beautiful flower, full of color and full of 
scent, the fine words of him who acts accordingly 
are full of fruit. 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 101 

" 'Let him speak the truth, let him not yield to 
anger, let him give when asked, even from the little 
he has. By these things he will enter heaven. 

" 'The man who has transgressed one law and 
speaks lies and denies a future world, there is no 
sin he could not do. 

' ' ' The real treasure is that laid up through charity 
and piety, temperance and self-control; the treasure 
thus hid is secured, and passes not away. 

" 'He who controls Ms tongue, speaks wisely and 
is not puffed up, who holds up the torch to enlighten 
the world, his word is sweet. 

"'Let his livelihood be kindness, his conduct 
righteousness; then in .the fullness of gladness he 
will make an end of grief. 

' ' ' He who is tranquil and has completed his course, 
who sees truth as it really is, but is not partial 
when there are persons of different faith to be dealt 
with, who with firm mind overcomes ill will and cov- 
etousness, he is a true disciple. 

' ' 'As a mother, even at the risk of her own life, 
protects her son, her only son, so let each one culti- 
vate good- will without measure among all beings.' 

"Nirvana is a state to be realized here on this 
earth. He who has reached the fourth stage of 
holiness consciously enjoys the bliss of Nirvana. 
But it is beyond the reach of him who is selfish, 
skeptical, realistic, sensual, full of hatred, full of 
desire, proud, self-righteous, and ignorant. When 
by supreme and unceasing effort he destroys all self- 
ishness and realizes the oneness of all beings; is free 
from all prejudices and dualism; when he by patient 



102 

investigation discovers truth, the stage of holiness 
is reached. 

"Among Buddhist ideals are self -sacrifice for the 
sake of others, compassion based on wisdom, joy in 
the hope that there is final bliss for the pure-minded, 
altruistic individual. The student of Buddha's 
religion takes the burden of life with sweet content- 
ment; uprightness is his delight; he encompasses 
himself with holiness in word and deed; he sustains 
his life by means that are quite pure; good is his 
conduct; guarded the door of his senses; mindful 
and self-possessed, he is altogether happy. 

"H. T. Buckle, the author of the 'History of 
Civilization,' says: 'A knowledge of Buddhism is 
necessary to the right understanding of Christianity. 
Buddhism is, besides, a most philosophical creed. 
Theologians should study it.' 

" In his inaugural address delivered at the Con- 
gress of Orientals last year, Max Mfiller remarked: 
' As to the religion of Buddha being influenced by 
foreign thought, no true scholar now dreams of that. 
The religion of Buddha is the daughter of the old 
Brahman religion, and a daughter in many respects 
more beautiful than the mother. On the contrary, 
it was through Buddhism that India, for the first 
time, stepped forth from its isolated position and 
became an actor in the historical drama of the world.' 

' ' Doctor Hoey, in his preface to Doctor Oldberg' s 
excellent work on Buddha, says: ' To thoughtful 
men who evince an interest in the comparative study 
of religious belief, Buddhism, as the highest effort 
of pure intellect to solve the problem of being, is 



A KELIGIOTJS SYMPOSIUM. 103 

attractive. It is not less so to the metaphysician 
and the sociologist who study the philosophy of the 
modern German pessimistic school and observe its 
social tendencies.' 

"Dr. Rhys David says that Buddhism is a field 
of inquiry in which the only fruit to be gathered is 
knowledge. R. C. Dutt says: ' The moral teach- 
ings and precepts of Buddhism have so much in 
common with those of Christianity that some con- 
nection between the. two systems of religion has 
long been suspected. Candid inquirers who have 
paid attention to the history of India and of the 
Greek world during the centuries immediately pre- 
ceding the Christian era, and noted the intrinsic 
relationship which existed between these countries 
in scientific, religious, and literary ideas, found no 
difficulty in believing that Buddhist ideas and 
precepts penetrated into the Greek world before 
the birth of Christ. The discovery of the Asoka 
inscription of Hirnar, which tells us that that en- 
lightened emperor of India made peace with five 
Greek kings, and sent Buddhist missionaries to 
preach his religion in Syria, explains to us the 
process by which the ideas were communicated. 
Researches into doctrines of the Therapeuts in 
Egypt and of the Essenes in Palestine leave no 
doubt, even in the minds of such devout Christian 
thinkers as Dean Mansel, that the movement which 
those sects embodied was due to Buddhist mission- 
aries who visited Egypt and Palestine within two 
generations of the time of Alexander the Great. A 
few writers, like Benson, Seydal, and Lillie, maintain 



104 world's religious congresses. 

that the Christian religion has sprung directly from 
Buddhism.' " 

JUDAISM. 

Judaism was amply represented in its historic 
relation to the past and to the future; but for the 
purposes of this comparison by no one more ably, 
and on no occasion more fully, than in the address 
of Dr. Emil G. Hirsch of Chicago, on the last day 
of the congress, upon "The Elements of Universal 
Religion." 

"The day of national religions," he said, "is 
past. The God of the universe speaks to all man- 
kind. He is not the God of Israel alone, not that 
of Moab, of Egypt, Greece, or America. He is not 
domiciled in Palestine. The Jordan and the 
Ganges, the Tiber and the Euphrates hold water 
wherewith the devout may be baptized unto his serv- 
ice and redemption. ' Whither shall I go from 
thy spirit % whither flee from thy presence % ' 
exclaims the old Hebrew bard. And before his 
wondering gaze unrolled itself the awful certainty 
that the heavenly divisions of morning and night 
were obliterated in the all-embracing sweep of 
divine law and love. If the wide expanses of the 
skies and abysses of the deep can not shut out from 
the divine presence, can the pigmy barriers erected 
by man and protected by political intrigues and 
national pride dam in the mighty stream of divine 
love? The prophet of Islam repeats the old Hebrew 
singer's joy when he says: 'The east is God's and 
the west is his,' as indeed the apostle, true to the 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 105 

spirit of the prophetic message of Messianic Judaism, 
refused to tolerate the line of cleavage marked by lan- 
guage or national affi nity . Greek and Jew are invited 
by him to the citizenship of the kingdom to come. 

" The church universal must have the pentecostal 
gift of the many flaming tongues in it, as the rabbis 
say was the case at Sinai. God's revelation must 
be sounded in every language, in every land. But, 
and this is essential as marking a new advance, the 
universal religion for all the children of Adam will 
not palisade its courts by the pointed and forbid- 
ding stakes of a creed. Creeds in time to come will 
be recognized to be indeed cruel barbed-wire fences, 
wounding those that would stray to broader past- 
ures and hurting others who would come in. 
Will it for this be a Godless church? Ah, no; it 
will have much more of God than the churches and 
synagogues with their dogmatic definitions now 
possess. Coming man will not be ready to resign 
the crown of his glory which is his by virtue of his 
feeling himself to be the son of God. He will not 
exchange the church's creed for that still more pre- 
sumptous and deadening one of materialism which 
would ask his acceptance of the hopeless perversion 
that the world which sweeps by us in such sublime 
harmony and order is not cosmos, but chaos — is the 
fortuitous outcome of the chance play of atoms pro- 
ducing consciousness by the interaction of their own 
unconsciousness. Man will not extinguish the 
light of his own higher life by shutting his eyes to 
the telling indications of purpose in history, a pur- 
pose which when revealed to him in the outcome of 



106 woeld's religious congresses. 

liis own career he may well find reflected also in the 
interrelated life of nature. But for all this man will 
learn a new modesty now wofully lacking to so 
many who honestly deem themselves religious. His 
God will not be a figment, cold and distant, of met- 
aphysics, nor a distorted caricature of embittered 
theology. c Can man by searching find out God % ' 
asks the old Hebrew poet. And the ages so flooded 
with religious strife or vocal with the staging 
rebuke to all creed-builders say that man can not. 
Man grows unto the knowledge of Gocl, but not to 
him is vouchsafed that fullness of knowledge which 
would warrant his arrogance to hold that his 
blurred vision is the full light and that there can be 
none other. 

" Says Maimonides, greatest thinker of the many 
Jewish philosophers of the middle ages: 'Of God 
we may merely assert that he is; what he is in him- 
self we can not know. "My thoughts are not your 
thoughts and my ways are not your ways." ' This 
prophetic caution will resound in clear notes in the 
ears of all who will worship in the days to come at 
the universal shrine. They will cease their futile 
efforts to give a definition of him who can not be 
defined in human symbols. They will certainly be 
astonished at our persistence — in their eyes very 
blasphemy — to describe by article of faith God, as 
though he were a fugitive from justice and a Pinker- 
ton detective should be enabled to capture him by 
the identification laid down in the catalogue of his 
attributes. The religion universal will not presume 
to regulate God' s government of this world by cir- 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 107 

cumscribing the sphere of his possible salvation and 
declaring, as though he had taken us into his counsel, 
whom he must save and whom he may not save. 
The universal religion will once more make the God 
idea a vital principle of human life. It will teach 
men to find him in their own hearts and to have him 
with them in whatever they may do. No mortal has 
seen God' s face, but he who opens his heart to the 
message will, like Moses on the lonely rock, behold 
him pass and hear the solemn proclamation. 

"It is not in the storm of fanaticism nor in the 
fire of prejudice, but in the still, small voice of con- 
science, that God speaks and is to be found. He 
believes in God who lives a godlike, i. e., a goodly, 
life. Not he that mumbles his credo, but he who 
lives it, is accepted. Were those marked for glory 
by the great Teacher of Nazareth who wore the 
largest phylacteries? Is the sermon on the mount 
a creed? Was the decalogue a creed? Character 
and conduct, not creed, will be the key-note of the 
gospel in the Church of Humanity Universal. 

"But what then about sin? Sin as a theological 
imputation will perhaps drop out of the vocabulary 
of this larger communion of the righteous. But as 
a weakness to be overcome, an imperfection to be 
laid aside, man will be as potently reminded of his 
natural shortcomings as he is now of that of his first 
progenitor, over whose conduct he certainly had no 
control, and for whose misdeed he should not be held 
accountable. Religion will then, as now, lift man 
above his weaknesses by reminding him of his 
responsibilities. The goal before is Paradise. Eden 



108 world's religious congresses. 

is to rise. It has not yet been. . And the life of the 
great and good and saintly, who went about doing 
good in their generations, and who died that others 
might live, will for very truth be pointed out as the 
spring from which have flowed the waters of salva- 
tion, by whose magic efficacy all men maybe washed 
clean, if baptized in the spirit which was living 
within these God-appointed redeemers, of their 
infirmities. 

w ' This religion will indeed be for man to lead him 
to God. Its sacramental word will be duty. Labor 
is not the curse but the blessing of human life. For 
as man was made in the image of the Creator, it is 
his to create. Earth was given him for his habita- 
tion. He changed it from Tohu into his home. A 
theology and a monotheism which will not leave 
room in this world for man' s free activity and dooms 
him to passive inactivity will not harmonize with 
the truer recognition that man and God are the 
correlates of a working plan of life. Sympathy and 
resignation are indeed beautiful flowers grown in the 
garden of many a tender and noble human heart. 
But it is active love and energy which alone can 
push on the chariot of human progress, and progress 
is the gradual realization of the divine spirit which 
is incarnate in every human being. This principle 
will assign to religion once more the place of honor 
among the redeeming agencies of society from the 
bondage of selfishness. On this basis every man is 
every other man' s brother, not merely in misery, but 
in active work. 'As you have done to the least of 
these you have unto me ' will be the guiding princi- 



A EELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 109 

pie of human conduct in all the relations into which 
human life enters. No more than Cain's enormous 
excuse, a scathing accusation of himself, ' Am I my 
brother's keeper? ' no longer will be tolerated or con- 
doned the double standard of morality, one for 
Sunday and the church and another diametrically 
opposed for week-days and the counting-room. Not 
as now will be heard the cynic insistence that 'busi- 
ness is business ' and has as business no connection 
with the decalogue or the sermon on the mount. 
Religion will, as it did in Jesus, penetrate into all 
the relations of human society. Not then will men 
be rated as so many hands to be bought at the low- 
est possible price, in accordance with a deified law of 
supply and demand, which can not stop to consider 
such sentimentalities as the fact that these hands 
stand for souls and hearts. 

"An invidious distinction obtains now between 
secular and sacred. It will be wiped away. Every 
thought and every deed of man must be holy or it 
is unworthy of men. Did Jesns merely regard the 
temple as holy? Did Buddha merely have religion 
on one or two hours of the Sabbath \ Did not an 
earlier prophet deride and condemn all ritual 
religion? 'Wash ye, make ye clean. ' Was this 
not the burden of Isaiah's religion? The religion 
universal will be true to these, its forerunners. 

"But what about death and hereafter? This 
religion will not dim the hope which has been man's 
since the first day of his stay on earth; but it will 
be most emphatic in winning men to the conviction 
that a life worthily spent here on earth is the best, 



110 world's religious congresses. 

is the only preparation for heaven. Said the old 
rabbis: ' One hour spent here in truly good works 
and in the true intimacy with God is more precious 
than all life to be.' The egotism which now mars 
so often the aspirations of our souls, the scramble 
for glory which comes while we forget duty, will be 
replaced by a serene trust in the eternal justice of 
him 'in whom we live and move and have our 
being.' To have done religiously will be a reward 
sweeter than which none can be offered. Yea, the 
religion of the future will be impatient of men who 
claim that they have the right to be saved, while 
they are perfectly content that others shall not be 
saved, and while not stirring a foot or lifting a hand 
to redeem brother men from hunger and wretched- 
ness, in the cool assurance that this life is destined 
or doomed to be a free race of haggling, snarling 
competitors in which by some mysterious will of 
Providence the devil takes the hindmost. 

"Will there be prayer in the universal religion? 
Man will worship, but in the beauty of holiness his 
prayer will be the prelude to his prayerful action. 
Silence is more reverential and worshipful than a 
wild torrent of words breathing forth not adoration 
but greedy requests for favors to self. Can an 
unforgiving heart pray, 'Forgive as we forgive?' 
Can one ask for daily bread when he refuses to 
break his bread with the hungry ? Did not the 
prayer of the great Master of Nazareth thus teach all 
men and all ages that prayer must be the stirring to 
love? Had not that little wait' caught the inspira- 
tion of our universal prayer who, when first 



A KELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. Ill 

taught its sublime phrases, persisted in changing 
the opening words to ' Your father which is in 
heaven % ' Rebuked time and again by the teacher, 
he finally broke out, 'Well, if it is our father, 
why, I am your brother.' Yea, the gates of prayer 
in the church to rise will lead to the recognition 
of the universal brotherhood of man. 

' ' Will this new faith have its Bible % It will. It 
retains the old Bibles of mankind, but gives them 
a new luster by remembering that ' the letter killeth, 
but the spirit giveth life. ' Religion is not a question 
of literature, but of life. God's revelation is con- 
tinuous, not contained in tablets of stone or sacred 
parchment. He speaks to-day yet to those that 
would hear him. A book is inspired when it 
inspires. Religion made the Bible, not the book 
religion. 

' ' And what will be the name of this church ? It 
will be known not by its founders, but by its fruits 
God replies to him who insists upon knowing his 
name: 'I am he who I am.' The church will be. 
If any name it will have, it will be 'the church of 
God,' because it will be the church of man. 

"When Jacob, so runs an old rabbinical legend, 
weary and footsore the first night of his sojourn 
away from home, would lay him down to sleep 
under the canopy of the star- set skies, all the 
stones of the field exclaimed: ' Take me for thy pil- 
low.' And because all were ready to serve him all 
were miraculously turned into one stone. This 
became Beth El, the gate of heaven. So will all 
religions, because eager to become the pillow of man, 



112 world's religious congresses. 

dreaming of God and beholding the ladder joining 
earth to heaven, be transformed into one great rock 
which the ages can not move, a foundation-stone 
for the all-embracing temple of humanity united 
to G-od's will with one accord." 

This address, most enthusiastically received, 
shows not only the new spirit of Judaism, but repre- 
sents the popular discontent with artificial, tradi- 
tional, and formal religions, and the demand for 
reality. It was notable, not for its definitions, or 
the new light thrown upon religious questions, but 
for its demand that a man shall be and do what he 
believes. Christians and men of the world, listen- 
ing, each defining "religion" for himself, yet 
enthusiastically applauded this appeal for reality 
and genuineness; and this the more because uttered 
by a representative of Judaism. 

MOHAMMEDANISM. 

A religion which holds influence over such mul- 
titudes, whole tribes and nations having been 
reclaimed by it from idolatry, naturally received a 
prominent place, and awakened much interest. 
There has been noticeable in recent years, moreover, 
a change in the attitude of Christians toward 
Mohammedanism. Whereas it was formerly attrib- 
uted to satanic agency, recently there has grown 
up a spirit of tolerance, not only, but a recognition 
in it of a mission from above, called for by the state 
of the Eastern nations, and brought forth 'in the 
Divine Providence. One feels some disappointment 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 113 

in the papers of Mohammed Webb on " The Spirit 
of Islam" and u The Influence of Islam on Social 
Conditions," which are confined almost exclusively 
to the superficial features of the Moslem religion, 
Some passages brought together from the two 
addresses delivered by him may serve our present 
purpose. Defining Islam, he said: 

' k Now let us see what the word Islam means. It 
is the most expressive word in existence for a 
religion. It means simply and literally resignation 
to the will of God. It means aspiration to God. 
The Islam system is designed to cultivate all that is 
purest and noblest and grandest in the human char- 
acter. Some people say Islam is impossible in a 
high state of civilization. Now that is the result 
of ignorance. Look at Spain in the eighth century, 
when it was the center of all the arts and sciences, 
when Christian Europe went to Moslem Spain to 
learn all that there was worth knowing — languages, 
arts, all the new discoveries were to be found in 
Moslem Spain, and in Moslem Spain alone. There 
was no civilization in the world as high as that of 
Moslem Spain. 

" With this spirit of resignation to the will of God 
is inculcated the idea of individual responsibility, 
that every man is responsible, not to this man, or 
that man, or the other man, but responsible to God 
for every thought and act of his life. He must pay 
for every act that he commits; he is rewarded for 
every thought he thinks. There is no mediator, 
there is no priesthood, there is no ministry. 

" The Moslem brotherhood stands upon a perfect 



114 world's religious congresses. 

equality, recognizing only the fatherhood of God 
and the brotherhood of man. The emir, who leads 
in prayer, preaches no sermon. He goes to the 
mosque every day at noon and reads two chapters 
from the holy Koran. He descends to the floor, 
upon a perfect level with the hundreds, or thou- 
sands, of worshipers, and the prayer goes on, he 
simply leading it. The whole system is calculated 
to inculcate that idea of perfect brotherhood. 

"The subject is so broad, there is so much of it 
that I can only touch upon it. There is so much 
unfamiliar to Americans and Englishmen in Islam 
that I regret exceedingly I have not more time to 
speak of it. A man said to me in New York the 
other day: ' Must I give up Jesus and the Bible if 
I become a Mohammedan ? ' No, no ! There is no 
Mussulman on earth who does not recognize the 
inspiration of Jesus. The system is one that has 
been taught by Moses, by Abraham, by Jesus, by 
Mohammed, by every inspired man the world has 
ever known. You need not give up Jesus, but as- 
sert your manhood. Go to God. 

"Now, let us look at the practical side of Islam 
in reference to the application of the spirit of Islam 
to daily life. A Mussulman is told that he must 
pray. So is everyone else; so are the followers of 
every other religion. But the Mussulman is not 
told to pray when he feels like it, if it does not inter- 
fere with business, with his inclinations, or some 
particular engagement. Some people do not pray at 
such times; they say it does not make very much, 
difference, we can make it up some other time. A 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 115 

little study of human nature will show that there 
are people who pray from a conscientious idea of 
doing a duty, but there are a great many others who 
shirk a duty at every chance if it interferes with 
pleasure or business. The wisdom of Mohammed 
was apparent in the single item of prayer. He did 
not say, ' Pray when you feel like it,' but 'Pray fi>e 
times a day at a certain time.' Stated in the briefest 
manner possible, the Islamic system requires belief 
in the unity of God and in the inspiration of Mo- 
hammed. Its pillars of practice are physical and 
mental cleanliness, prayer, fasting, fraternity, alms- 
giving, and pilgrimage. There is nothing in it that 
tends to immorality, social degradation, nor fanati- 
cism. On the contrary, it leads on to all that is 
purest and noblest in the human character; and any 
professed Mussulman who is unclean in his person 
or habits, or is cruel, untruthful, dishonest, irrever- 
ent, or fanatical, fails utterly to grasp the meaning 
of the religion he professes. 

"But there is something more in the system than 
the mere teaching of morality and personal purity. 
It is thoroughly practical, and the results, which 
are plainly apparent among the more intelligent 
Moslems, show how well the prophet understood 
human nature. It will not produce the kind of 
civilization that we Americans seem to admire so 
much, but it will make a man sober, honest, and 
truthful, and will make him love his God with all his 
heart and all his mind, and his neighbor as himself. 
Every Mussulman who has not become demoral- 
ized by contact with British civilization prays five 



116 world's religious congresses. 

times 'a day; not whenever he happens to feel like 
it, but at fixed periods. His prayer is not a servile, 
cringing petition for some material benefit, but a 
hymn of pjraise to the one incomprehensible, un- 
knowable God, the omnipotent, omniscient, omni- 
present ruler of the universe. He does not believe 
that by argument and entreaty he can sway the 
judgment and change the plans of Grod; but with 
all the force of his soul he tries to soar upward in 
spirit to where he can gain strength to be pure and 
good and holy, and worthy of the happiness of the 
future life. His purpose is to rise above the selfish 
pleasures of earth, and strengthen his spirit wings 
for a lofty flight when he is at last released from 
the body. 

' ' Before every prayer he is required to wash his 
face, nostrils, mouth, hands, and feet, and he does 
it. During youth he acquires the habit of washing 
himself five times a day, and this habit clings to him 
through life and keeps him j)hysically clean. He 
comes in touch with his religion five times a day in 
a manner which produces results proportionate to 
the intelligence and spiritual development of the 
man His religion is not a thing apart from his 
daily life, to be put on once a week, and thrown 
aside when it threatens to interfere with his busi- 
ness or pleasure. It is a fixed and inseparable part 
of his existence, and exerts a direct and potent 
influence on his every thought and act. Is it to be 
wondered at that his idea of civilization differs from 
that of the West ? That it is less active and pro- 
gressive, less grand and imposing, and dazzling and 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 117 

noisy ? I will confess that when I went to live among 
the intelligent Mussulmans I was astonished beyond 
measure at the social conditions I encountered. I 
had acquired the idea that prevails generally in this 
country and Europe, and was prepared to find the 
professed followers of Islam selfish, treacherous, 
untruthful, intolerant, sensual, and fanatical. I 
was very agreeably disappointed. I saw the practi- 
cal results of Islam manifested in honesty, truthful- 
ness, sobriety, tolerance, gentleness, and a degree of 
true brotherly love that was a surprise to me. The 
evils that we Americans complain of in our social 
system — drunkenness, prostitution, marital infi- 
delity, and cold selfishness — were almost entirely 
absent." 

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

Throughout the series of congresses the interest 
and activity of the Catholic church was conspicuous; 
and in the deliverances before the parliament none 
surpassed its representatives in the generosity of 
love for the good of all men, combined with the 
quiet dignity of faith in its divine authority and 
mission to help men. If the individual, as Prince 
Wolkonsky said, in proportion to the strength of 
his individual qualities, seeks the more to merge 
himself in the church, it is because he has persuaded 
himself that the church is of God, and that he 
speaks through it as an organic whole. This was 
the conclusion presented by Bishop Keane, rector 
of the Catholic University of America, in his ad- 
dress on "The Center and Character of the Ultimate 



118 

Religion," at the last session of the parliament. If 
the conclusion was to be expected, it may surprise 
some to observe the breadth of his recognition of 
good and truth in a]l religions. 

Starting out with congratulations at the meeting 
of God 1 s long-separated children to clasp hands in 
friendship and in brotherhood, he said: " We have 
had practical and experimental evidence of the truth 
of the old saying that 'there is truth in all relig- 
ions." And he stated explicitly what was none too 
often remembered: " It is because the human fam- 
ily started from unity, from one undivided treasury 
of truth, and when the separations and wanderings 
came they carried with them what they could of the 
treasure. No wonder that we all recognize the com- 
mon possession of the olden truth when we come 
together at Inst. 

"Then we have heard repeated and multifarious, 
yet concordant definitions of what religion really 
is, viewed in all its aspects; we have seen how true 
is the old definition that religion means the union 
of man with God. This, we have seen, is the great 
goal toward which all aim, whether walking in the 
fullness of the light or groping in the dimness of 
the twilight. And therefore we have seen how true 
it is that religion is a reality back of all religions. 
Religions are orderly or disorderly systems for the 
attainment of that great end, the union of man with 
God. Any system not having that for its aim may 
be a philosophy, but can not be a religion! 

' ' And therefore, again, we have clearly recognized 
that religion, in itself and in the system for its 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 119 

attainment, necessarily implies two sides, two con- 
stitutive elements — the human and the divine, 
man's side to God's side, in the union and in the 
way or means to it. The human side of it, the crav- 
ing, the need, the aspiration, is, as here testified, 
universal among men. And this is a demonstration 
that the author of our nature is not wanting as to 
his side; that the essential religiousness of man is 
not a meaningless trick of nature; that the craving 
is not a Tantalus in man's heart meant only for his 
delusion and torture. This parliament has thus 
been a weighty blow to atheism, to deism, to antag- 
onism, to naturalism, to mere humanism. While 
the utterances of these various philosophies have 
been listened to with courage and charity, yet its 
whole meaning and moral has been to the contrary; 
the whole drift of its practical conclusion has been 
that man and the world never could, and in the 
nature of things never can, do without God, and so 
it is a blessing. 

"From this standpoint, therefore, on which our 
feet are so plainly and firmly planted by this parlia- 
ment, we look forward and ask, Has religion a future, 
and what is that future to be like ? Again in the 
facts which we have been studying during these 
seventeen days we find the data to guide us to the 
answer. Here we have heard the voice of all the 
nations, yea, and of all the ages, certifying that the 
human intellect must have the great first cause and 
last end as the alpha and omega of its thinking; that 
there can be no philosophy of things without God. 

1 l Here we have heard the cry of the human heart 



120 world's religious congresses. 

all the world over that without God life would not 
be worth living. We have heard the verdict of 
human society in all its ranks and conditions, the 
verdict of those who have most intelligently and 
most disinterestedly studied the problem of the 
improvement of human conditions, that only the 
wisdom and power of religion can solve the mighty 
social problems of the future, and that in proportion- 
as the world advances toward the perfection of self- 
government, the need of religion as a balance-power 
in every human life, and in the relations of man 
with man and of nation with nation, becomes more 
and more imperative. Next we must ask, Shall the 
future tendency of religion be to greater unity, or 
to greater diversity? 

" This parliament has brought out in clear light 
the old familiar truth that religion has a two-fold 
aim — the improvement of the individual and, 
through that, the improvement of society and of 
race; that it must, therefore, have in its system of 
organization and its methods of action a two-fold 
tendency and plan on the one side to what might be 
called religious individualism, on the other side 
what may be termed religious socialism or solidarity; 
on the one side, adequate provision for the dealings 
of God with the individual soul; on the other, pro- 
vision for the order, the harmony, the unity, which 
is always a characteristic of the works of God, and 
which is equally the aim of wisdom in tiuman 
things, for ' order is heaven's first law.' 

ki The parliament has also shown that, if it may 
be truly alleged that there have been times when 



A KELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 121 

solidarity pressed too heavily on individualism, at 
present the tendency is to an extreme of individu- 
alism threatening to fill the world more and more 
with religious confusion and distract the minds of 
men with religious contradictions. 

" But on what basis, what method, is religious 
unity to be attained or approached? Is it to be by 
a x3rocess of elimination, or by a process of synthesis? 
Is it to be by laying aside all disputed elements, no 
matter how manifestly true and beautiful and use- 
ful, so as to reach at last the simplest form of 
religious assertion, the protoplasm of the religious 
organism? Or, on the contrary, is it to be by the 
acceptance of all that is manifestly true, and good, 
and useful, of all that is manifestly from the heart 
of God as well as from the heart of humanity, so as 
to attain to the developed and perfected organism 
of religion? To answer this momentous question 
wisely let us glance at analogies. 

' ' First, in regard to human knowledge, we are, 
and must be, willing to go down to the level of un- 
informed or imperfectly informed minds; not, how- 
ever, to make that the intellectual level of all, but in 
order that from that low level we may lead up to 
the higher and higher levels which knowledge has 
reached. In like manner as to civilization, we are 
willing to meet the barbarian or the savage on his 
own low level, not in order to assimilate our condi- 
tion to his, but in order to lead him up to better 
conditions. So also in scientific research we go 
down to the study of the protoplasm and of the cell, 
but only in order that we may trace the process of 



122 world's religious congresses. 

differentiation, of accretion, of development by 
which higher and higher forms of organization lead 
to the highest. In the light, therefore, of all the 
facts here placed before us, let us ask to what result 
gradual development will lead us. 

"In the first place, this comparison of all the 
principal religions of the world has demonstrated 
that the only worthy and admissible idea of God is 
that of monotheism. It has shown that polytheism 
in all its forms is only a rude degeneration. It 
has proved that pantheism in all its modifications, 
obliterating as it does the personality both of God 
and of man, is no religion at all, and therefore 
inadmissible as such. That it can not even be 
admitted as a philosophy, since its very first postu- 
lates are metaphysical contradictions. Hence, the 
basis of all religion is the belief in the one living- 
God. 

"Next, this parliament has shown that humanity 
repudiates the gods of the Epicureans, who were so 
taken up with their own enjoyment that they had 
no thought for poor man, and nothing to say to 
him for his instruction and no care to bestow 
on Jiim for his welfare. It has shown that the 
god of agnosticism is only the god of the Epi- 
cureans dressed up in modern garb and that he 
cares nothing for humanity, but leaves it in the 
dark; humanity cares nothing for him and is will- 
ing to leave him to his unknowableness. As the 
first step in the solid ascent of the true religion is 
belief in the one living God, so the second must be 
the belief that the great Father has taught his 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 123 

children what they need to know and what they 
need to be in order to attain their destiny, that 
is, belief in divine revelation. 

"Again, the parliament has shown that all the 
attempts of the tribes of earth to recall and set 
forth God's teaching, all their endeavors to tell of 
the means provided by the Almighty God for uniting 
man with himself, logical ly and historically lead 
up to and culminate in Jesus Christ. The world 
longing for the truth points to him who brings its 
fullness. The world's sad wail over the wretched- 
ness of sin points not to despairing escape from the 
thralls of humanity — a promise of escape which is 
only an impossibility and a delusion — but to hu- 
manity's cleansing, and uplifting, and restoration in 
his redemption. The world's craving for union 
with the divine finds its archetypal glorious realiza- 
tion in his incarnation, and to a share in that won- 
drous union all are called as branches of the mystical 
vine, members of the mystical body, which lifts 
humanity above its natural state and jiours into it 
the life of love. 

"Therefore does the verdict of the ages proclaim 
in the words of the apostle of the Gentiles, who 
knew him and knew all the rest: 'Other founda- 
tion can no man lay but that which God hath laid, 
which is Cbrist Jesus.' As long as God is God and 
man is man, Jesus Christ is the center of religion 
forever. 

"But, still further, we have seen that Jesus 
Christ is not a myth, not a symbol, but a personal 
reality. He is not a vague, shadowy personality, 



124 WORLD'S RELIGIOUS CONGRESSES. 

leaving only a dim, vague, mystical impression be- 
hind him; he is a clear and definite personality, 
with a clear and definite teaching as to truth, clear 
and definite command as to duty, clear and definite 
ordaining as to the means by which God's life 
is imparted to man and by which man receives it, 
corresponds to it, and advances toward perfection. 

"The wondrous message he sent 'to every creat- 
ure,' proclaiming, as it had never been proclaimed 
before, the value and the rights of each individual 
soul, the sublimest individualism the world has ever 
heard of. And then, with the heavenly balance 
and equilibrium which brings ail individualities 
into order, and harmony, and unity, he calls all to 
be sheep of (me fold, branches of one vine, mem- 
bers of one body, in which all, while members of 
one head, are also 'members one of another,' in 
which is the fulfillment of his own sublime prayer 
and prophecy: ' That all may be one, as thou, 
Father, in me, and I in thee, that they also may be 
one in us, that they may be made perfect in one.' 

"Thus he makes his church a perfect society, 
both human and divine; on its human side the 
most perfect multiplicity in unity and unity in 
multiplicity, the most perfect socialism and solidar- 
ity that the world could ever know; on its divine 
side, the instrumentality devised by the Saviour of 
the world for imparting, maintaining, and operating 
the action of the divine life in each soul; in its en- 
tirety, the body, the vine, both divine and human, 
a living organism, imparting the life of God to hu- 
manity. This is the way in which the church of 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 125 

Christ is presented to us by the apostles and by 
our Lord himself. It is a concrete individuality, as 
distinct and unmistakable as himself. It is no mere 
aggregation, no mere cooperation or confederation 
of distinct bodies; it is an organic unity, it is the 
body of Christ, our means of being ingrafted in 
him and sharing in his life." 

Many who felt the bishop mistaken in his conclu- 
sion that the Catholic church is the organic body of 
Christ, presented by the apostles and kept in living- 
integrity by the spirit of the Lord from the begin- 
ning for its ultimate perfection, could not but feel 
the majesty of the conception, and the ultimate cer- 
tainty of some such realization, even if only in a 
spiritual and invisible bond, when he concluded 
with these words: "Jesus Christ is the ultimate 
center of religion. He has declared that his one 
organic church is equally ultimate. Because I be- 
lieve him, here must be my stand forever." 

THE GREEK CHURCH. 

One of the most eloquent and every way remark- 
able of the addresses before the parliament was the 
oration of Archbishop Latus, on the part of Greece 
and the Greek church in the history of Christianity. 
It set forth in noble review the intellectual prepara- 
tion of the world for Christianity through the influ- 
ence of Grecian learning and philosophy. 

' ' Ancient Greece prepared the way for Christian- 
ity, and rendered smooth the path for the diffusion 
and propagation of it in the world Greece under- 



126 world's religious congresses. 

took to develop Christianity, and formed and sys- 
tematized a Christian church; that is the church of 
the East, the original Christian church, which for 
this reason historically and justly may be called 
the mother of the Christian churches. The orig- 
inal establishment of the Greek church is directly 
referred to the presence of Jesus Christ and his 
apostles. The coming of the Messiah, from which 
the kingdom of God was to originate in this world, 
was at a fixed point of time, as the Apostle Paul 
said. The fullness of this point of time ancient 
Greece was predestined to point out and determine. 
Greece had to developed letters, arts, sciences, phi- 
losophy, and every other form of progress, that in 
comparison with it all other nations were exhausted. 
For this reason the inhabitants of that happy land 
used rightly and properly to say: ' Whoever is not 
a Greek is a barbarian.' But while at that time, 
under Plato and Aristotle, Greek philosophy had 
arrived at the highest phase of its development, 
Greece at that very period, after these great philos- 
ophers, began to decline and fall. The Macedonian 
and Eoman armies gave a definite blow to the polit- 
ical independence and national liberty of Greece, 
but at the same time opened up to Greece a new 
career of spiritual life, and brought them into imme- 
diate contact and intercommunication with other 
nations and peoples of the earth." ' 

Tracing then the development of Grecian philos- 
ophy in Alexandria, and its contact there with 
Judaism, and the reflex effect upon Grecian thought, 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 127 

the archbishop proceeded to show the relation of 
this intellectual preparation to the reception of 
Christianity. 

"When the Roman Empire began to fall Chris- 
tianity had to undertake the great struggle of 
acquiring superiority over all other religions that it 
might demolish the partition walls which separated 
race from race, nation from nation. It is the work 
of Christianity to bring all men into one spiritual 
family, into the love of one another, and into the 
belief of one supreme God. Mary, the most blessed 
of all human kind, appears and brings forth the 
expected divine nature, revealed to Plato. She 
brings forth the fulfillment of the ideals of the Gods 
of the different peoples and nations of the ancient 
world. She brings forth at last that one whose 
name, whose shadow - came down into the world and 
overshadowed the souls, the minds, the hearts of all 
men, and removed the mystery from every philoso- 
phy and philosophic system. 

' ; In this permanent idea and the tendencies of the 
different peoples in such a time and religion, I may 
say two voices are heard. One, though it is from 
Palestine, reechoed into Egypt, and especially to 
Alexandria and through parts of Greece and Home. 
Another voice from Egypt reechoed through. Pales- 
tine, and through it over all the other countries and 
peoples of the East. And the voices from Palestine, 
having Jerusalem as their focus and center, reechoed 
the voice back again to the Grecians and the 
Romans. And there it was that his doctrine fell 
amidst the Greek nations, the Grecian elements of 



128 world's religious congresses. 

character, Greek letters, and the sound reasoning 
of different systems of Greek philosophy. 

" Surely in the regeneration of the different peo- 
ples there had been a divine revelation in the forma- 
tion of all human kind into one spiritual family 
through the goodness of God. In one family equal, 
without any distinctions between the mean and the 
great, without distinction of climate or race, with- 
out distinction of national destiny or inspiration, of 
name or nobility, or family ties. And all the 
beauties which ever clustered around the ladder of 
Jacob, or were given to it by the men of Judea, were 
given by the prophets to the Virgin Mary in the 
cave of Bethlehem. But Greece gave Christianity 
the letters, gave the art, gave, as I may say, the 
enlightenment with which the Gospel of Christianity 
was invested, and presented itself then and now 
presents itself before all nations." 

Following the history of the introduction of Chris- 
tianity into Greece, reciting in magnificent decla- 
mation Paul's sermon on Mars Hill, translating 
and applying it in scarcely less remarkable English, 
he concluded: 

' ' It suffices me to say that no one of you, I 
believe, in the presence of these historical docu- 
ments will deny that the original Christian, the first 
Christan church was the church of the East, and 
that is the Greek church. Surely the first Christian 
churches in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Assyria were 
instituted by the apostles of Christ and for the 
most part in Greek communities. All those are the 
foundation-stones on which the present Greek 




MOST REV. DIONYSTOS LATUS, 

Archbishop of Zante, Greece. 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 129 

church is based. The apostles themselves preached 
and wrote in the Greek letters, and all the teachers 
and writers of the gospel in the East, the contem- 
poraries and the successors of the apostles, were 
teaching, preaching, and writing in the Greek lan- 
guage. Especially the two great schools, that of 
Alexandria and that of Antioch, undertook to 
develop Christianity and form and systematize a 
Christian church. The great teachers and writers 
of these two schools, whose names are very well 
known, labored courageously to defend and deter- 
mine forever the Christian doctrine and to con- 
stitute under divine rules and forms a Christian 
church. At last the Greek church, therefore, may 
be called historically and justly the treasurer of the 
first Christian doctrine, fundamental evangelical 
truths. It may be called the ark which bears the 
spiritual manna and feeds all those who look to it 
in order to obtain from it the richness of the ideas 
and the unmistakable reasoning of every Christian 
doctrine, of every evangelical truth, of every 
ecclesiastical sentiment. 

' ' After this my oration about the Greek church I 
have nothing more to add than to extend my open 
arms and embrace all those who attend this congress 
of the ministers of the world. I embrace, as my 
brothers in Jesus Christ, as my brothers in the 
divinely inspired gospel, as my friends in eminent 
ideas and sentiments, all men; for we have a common 
creator, and consequently a common father and God. 
And I pray you lift with me for a moment the mind 
toward the divine presence, and say with me, with 



130 world's religious congresses. 

all your minds and hearts, a prayer to Almighty 
God." 

Here the grand old churchman lifted his hands 
and his eyes heavenward, and said: 

"Most High, Omnipotent King, look down upon 
human kind; enlighten us that we may know thy 
will, thy ways, thy holy truths. Bless and magnify 
the reunited peoples of the world and the great 
people of the United States of America, whose 
greatness and kindness has invited us from the 
remotest parts of the earth in this their Columbian 
year to see with them an evidence of their progress 
in the wonderful achievements of the human mind 
and the human soul." 

JAPANESE CRITICISM AND APPEAL. 

On more than one occasion Christendom and 
Christianity, as represented by missionaries and 
Christian civilization, came in for severe criticism 
from the representatives of other religions. 

Kinza Riuge Hirai of Japan created quite a sen- 
sation by an earnest assault upon the treatment of 
Japan by so-called Christian nations. Among other 
things in his arraignment he said: 

"Admitting, for the sake of argument, that we 
are idolaters and heathen, is it Christian morality to 
trample upon the rights and advantages of a non- 
Christian nation, coloring all their natural happi- 
ness with the dark stain of injustice? I read in the 
Bible, 'Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right 
cheek, turn to him thy left also' ; but I can not dis- 
cover there any passage which says, 'Whosoever 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 131 

shall demand justice of thee smite his right cheek, 
and when he turns smite the other also.' Again I 
read in the Bible, ' If any man will sue thee at law, 
and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak 
also'; but I can not discover there any passage 
which says, ' If thou shalt sue any man at the law, 
and take away his coat, let him give thee his cloak 
also. ' You send your missionaries to Japan and they 
advise us to be moral and believe Christianity. We 
like to be moral; we know that Christianity is good; 
and we are very thankful for this kindness; but at 
the same time our people are rather perplexed and 
very much in doubt about this advice. For we 
think that the treaty stipulated in the time of feud- 
alism, when we were yet in our youth, is still clung 
to by the powerful nations of Christendom; when 
we find that every year a good many western vessels 
engaged in the seal fishery are smuggled into our 
seas; when legal cases are decided by the foreign 
authorities in Japan unfavorably to us; when some 
years a Japanese was not allowed to enter a univer- 
sity on the Pacific Coast of America because of his 
being of a different race; when a few months ago 
the school board of San Francisco enacted a regula- 
tion that no Japanese should be allowed to enter 
the public school there; when last year the Japan- 
ese were driven out in wholesale from one of the 
territories of the United States of America; when 
our business men in San Francisco were compelled 
by some union not to employ the Japanese assist- 
ants or laborers, but the Americans; when there are 
some in the same city who speak on the platforms 



132 world's religious congresses. 

against those of us who are already here; when 
there are many men who go in processions hoisting 
lanterns marked ' Jap must go' ; when the Japanese 
in the Hawaiian Islands are deprived of their suf- 
frage; when we see some western people in Japan 
who erect before the entrance of their houses a 
special post upon which is the notice, ' No Japanese 
is allowed to enter here,' just like a board upon 
which is written, ' No dogs allowed' ; when we ore 
in such a situation is it unreasonable — notwith- 
standing the kindness of the western nations, from 
one point of view, who send their missionaries to us 
— for us intelligent heathen to be embarrassed and 
hesitate to swallow the sweet and warm liquid of 
the heaven of Christianity? If such be the Christian 
ethics, well, we are perfectly satisfied to be heathen. 
' ' If any person should claim that there are many 
people in Japan who speak and write against Chris- 
tianity, I am not a hypocrite and I will frankly 
state that I was the first in my country who ever 
publicly attacked Christianity — no, not real Chris- 
tianity, but false Christianity, the wrongs done 
toward us by the people of Christendom. If any 
reprove the Japanese because they have had strong 
an ti- Christian societies, I will honestly declare that 
I was the first in Japan who ever organized a society 
against Christianity — no, not against real Chris- 
tianity, but to protect ourselves from false Chris- 
tianity and the injustice which we receive from the 
people of Christendom. Do not tliink that I took 
such a stand on account of my being a Buddhist, for 
this was my position many years before I entered 



A KELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 133 

the Buddhist temple; but at the same time I will 
proudly state that if any one discussed the affinity 
of all religions before the public, under the title of 
Synthetic Religion, it was T. I say this to you 
because I do not wish to be understood as a bigoted 
Buddhist sectarian. 

"Really there is no sectarian in my country. 
Our people well know what abstract truth is in 
Christianity, and we, or at least I, do not care about 
the names if I speak from the point of teaching. 
Whether Buddhism is called Christianity or Chris- 
tianity is named Buddhism, whether we are called 
Confucianists or Shintoists, we are not particular; 
but we are very particular about the truth taught 
and its consistent application. Whether Christ 
saves us or drives us into hell, whether Gautama 
Buddha was a real person or there never was such 
a man, it is not a matter of consideration to us, but 
the consistency of doctrine and conduct is the point 
on which Ave put the greater importance. Therefore 
unless the inconsistency which we observe is re- 
nounced, and especially the unjust treaty by which 
we are entailed is revised upon an equitable basis, our 
people will never cast away their prejudices about 
Christianity, in spite of the eloquent orator who 
speaks its truth from the pulpit. We are very often 
called barbarians, and I have heard and read that 
Japanese are stubborn and can not understand the 
truth of the Bible. I will admit that this is true in 
some sense, for, though they admire the eloquence 
of the orator and wonder at his courage, though they 
approve his logical argument, yet they are very 



134 world's religious congresses. 

stubborn and will not join Christianity as long as 
they think it is a western morality to preach one 
thing and practice another." 

Far more significant than this criticism of the 
breach between Christian theory and practice is an 
appeal made at a later day from the Christianity of 
the sects to the Christianity of the gospels. 1ST. 
Kishimoto, speaking of the future of religion in 
Japan, pointed out that "that country is the battle- 
field between religion and no religion, and also 
between Christianity and other systems of religion," 
and in concluding said: 

"In my mind there is no doubt that Christianity 
will survive in this struggle for existence and 
become the future religion of the land of the rising 
sun. My reasons for this are numerous, but I must 
be brief. In the first place, Christianity claims to 
be and is the universal religion. It teaches one 
God, who is the father of all mankind, but is so 
pliable that it can adapt itself to any environment, 
and then it can transform and assimilate the environ- 
ment to itself. This is amply proved by its history. 
In the second place, Christianity is inclusive. It 
is a living organism, a seed or germ which is capa- 
ble of growth and development and which will 
leaven all the nations of the world. In growing it 
draws and can draw its nutritious elements from 
any sources. It survives the struggle of existence 
and feeds and grows on the flesh of the fallen. 

"In the third place, Christianity teaches that man 
was created in the image of God. The human is 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 135 

divine and the divine is human. Here lies the 
merit of Christianity, in uplifting man, all human 
beings — young and old, men and women, the 
governing and the governed — to their proper posi- 
tion. In the fourth place, Christianity teaches love 
to God and love to men as its fundamental teaching. 
The golden rule is the glory of Christianity, not 
because it was originated by Christ — this rule was 
also taught by Buddha and Lao-tsee many centuries 
before — but because he properly emphasized it by 
his words and by his life. In the fifth place, Chris- 
tianity requires every man to be perfect, as the Father 
in heaven is jjerfect. Here lies the basis for the hope 
of man's infinite development in science, in art, and 
in character — in one word, in perfection. In brief 
these are some of the reasons which make me think 
that sooner or later Christianity will, as it ought to, 
become the future religion of Japan. 

"If Christianity will triumph and become the 
religion of Japan, which form of Christianity, or 
Christianity of which denomination, will become 
the religion of Japan? Catholic Christianity or 
Protestant Christianity? We do not want Catholic 
Christianity, nor do we want Protestant Chris- 
tianity. We want the Christianity of the Bible, 
nay, the Christianity of Christianity. We do not 
want the Christianity of England nor the Chris- 
tianity of America; we want the Christianity of 
Japan. On the whole, it is better to have different 
sects and denominations than to have lifeless monot- 
ony. The Christian church should observe the 
famous saying of St. Vincent: 'In essentials, unity; 



136 world's religious congresses. 

in non-essentials, liberty; in all tilings charity. 1 
We Japanese want the Christianity of the Christ. 
We want the truth of Christianity; nay, we want 
the truth pure and simple. We want the spirit of 
the Bible and not its letter. We hope for the 
union of all Christians, at least in spirit if not 
possible in form. But we Japanese Christians are 
hoping more; we are ambitious to present to the 
world one new and unique inter pretation of Chris- 
tianity as it is presented in our Bible, which knows 
no sectarian controversy and which knows no heresy 
hunting. Indeed, the time is coming, and ought to 
come, when God shall be worshiped, not by rites .and 
ceremonies, but he shall be worshiped in spirit and 
in truth." 

This voice from the Orient will be hailed by many 
as a hopeful portent. If some despair of anything 
better in the effort of native churches to find in the 
Gospels the religion of Jesus Christ, others, more 
hopeful and more faithful, will see in that effort the 
promise of a true Christian church that may yet 
become the teacher of a Christendom that has lost 
its teaching power through the falsities of centuries' 
inventing. And this aspiration after a new and 
native form of Christianity, free from the dogmas of 
Western theologies, and suited to the genius of 
the oriental mind, recalls another form of faith; a 
reform in the religion of India which its founder, 
Cheshub Chunder Senn, proclaimed as "The New 
Dispensation in India." 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 137 

THE BRAHMO-SOMAJ. 

Much interest attaches to this development of 
Hinduism, because, started as a reform movement 
in India, it became in its development under the 
leadership of Cheshub Chunder Senn in some degree 
a native Christian church. Since the death of 
Chunder Senn, P. C. Mozoomdar, who was present 
and spoke often at the congresses, has been the 
acknowledged leader of the movement. The Rev. 
B. B. Nagarkar of Bombay furnished in his ad- 
dress the following simple and beautiful exposi- 
tion of " The Ideals of the Brahmo-Somaj ": 

' ' The fundamental spiritual ideal of the Brahmo- 
Somaj is belief in the existence of one true God. 
Now, the expression belief in the existence of God 
is nothing new to you. In a way you all believe in 
God, but to us of the Brahmo-Somaj that belief is 
a stern reality; it is not a logical idea; it is nothing 
arrived at after an intellectual process. It must be 
our aim to feel God, to realize God in our daily 
spiritual communion with him. We must be able, 
as it were, to feel his touch — to feel as if we were 
shaking hands with him. This deep, vivid, real, 
and lasting perception of the Supreme Being is the 
first and foremost ideal of the theistic faith. 

' ' You in the Western countries are too apt to for- 
get this ideal. The ceaseless demand on your time 
and energy, the constant worry and hurry of your 
business activity, and the artificial conditions of 
your Western civilization are all calculated to make 
you forgetful of the personal presence of God. You 
are too apt to be satisfied with a mere belief — per- 



138 wokld's religious congresses. 

haps at the best a notional belief in God. The East- 
ern does not live on such a belief, and such a belief 
can never form the life of a life-giving faith. It is 
said that the way to an Englishman's heart is 
through his stomach; that is, if you wish to reach 
his heart you must do so through the medium of 
that wonderful organ called the stomach. The 
stomach, therefore, is the life of an Englishman, 
and all his life rests in his stomach. 

"Wherein does the heart of a Hindu lie \ It lies 
in his sight. He is not satisfied unless and until he 
has seen God. The highest dream of his spiritual 
life is God-vision — the seeing and feeling in every 
place and at every time the presence of a Supreme 
Being. He does not live by bread but by sight. 

" The second spiritual ideal of the Brahmo-Somaj 
is the nnity of truth. We believe that truth is born 
in time but not in a place. No nation, no people, 
or no community has any exclusive monopoly of 
God's truth. It is a misnomer to speak of truth as 
Christian truth, Hindu truth, or Mohammedan truth. 
Truth is the body of God. In his own providence 
he sends it through the instrumentality of a nation 
or a people, but that is no reason why that nation 
or that people should pride themselves for having 
been the medium of that truth. Thus we must 
always be ready to receive the gospel truth from 
whatever country and from whatever people it may 
come to ns. We all believe in the principle of 
free trade or unrestricted exchange of goods. And 
we eagerly hope and long for the golden day when 
people of every nation and of every clime will pro- 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 139 

claim the principle of free trade in spiritual matters 
as ardently and as zealously as they are doing in 
secular affairs or in industrial matters. 

"It appears to me that it is the duty of us all to 
put together the grand and glorious truths believed 
in and taught by different nations of the world. 
This synthesis of truth is a necessary result of the 
recognition of the principle of the unity of truth. 
Owing to this character of the Brahmo-Somaj the 
church of Indian theism has often been called an 
eclectic church; yes, the religion of the Brahmo- 
Somaj is the religion of eclecticism, of putting 
together the spiritual truths of the entire humanity 
and of earnestly striving after assimilating them 
with our spiritual being. The religion of the 
Brahmo-Somaj is inclusive and not exclusive. 

"The third spiritual ideal of the Brahmo-Somaj 
is the harmony of prophets. We believe that the 
prophets of the world — spiritual teachers such as" 
Vyas and Buddha, Moses and Mohammed, Jesus 
and Zoroaster, all form a homogeneous whole. 
Each has to teach mankind his own message. 
Every prophet was sent from above with a distinct 
message, and it is the duty of us who live in these 
advanced times to put these messages together and 
thereby harmonize and unify the distinctive teach- 
ings of the prophets of the world. It would not do 
to accept the one and reject all the others, or to 
accept some and reject even a single one. The 
general truths taught by these different prophets 
are nearly the same in their essence; but in the 
midst of all these universal truths that they taught 



140 WOULD' S RELIGIOUS CONGRESSES. 

each lias a distinctive truth to teach, and it should 
be our earnest purpose to lind out and understand 
this particular truth. To me Vyas teaches how to 
understand and apprehend the attributes of divin- 
ity. The Jewish prophets of the Old Testament 
teach the idea of the sovereignty of God; they 
speak of God as a king, a monarch, a sovereign 
who rules over the affairs of mankind as nearly and 
as closely as an ordinary human king. Mohammed, 
on the other hand, most emphatically teaches the 
idea of the unity of God. He rebelled against the 
trinitarian doctrine imported into the religion of 
Christ through Greek and Roman influences. The 
monotheism of Mohammed is hard and unyielding, 
aggressive, and almost savage. I have no sympathy 
with the errors or erroneous teachings of Moham- 
medanism, or of any religion, for that matter. In 
spite of all such errors Mohammed's ideal of the 
unity of God stands supreme and unchallenged in his 
teachings. Buddha, the great teacher of morals and 
ethics, teaches in most sublime strains the doctrine 
of Nirvana, or self-denial and self-effacement. This 
principle of extreme self-abnegation means nothing 
more than the subjugation and conquest of our 
carnal self. For you know that man is a composite 
being. In him he has the angelic and the animal, 
and the spiritual training of our life means no more 
than subjugation of the animal and the setting free of 
the angelic. So, also, Christ Jesus of Nazareth 
taught a sublime truth when he inculcated the noble 
idea of the fatherhood of God. He taught many 
other truths, but the fatherhood of God stands su- 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 141 

preme above them all. The brotherhood of man is a 
mere corollary, or a conclusion, deduced from the 
idea of the fatherhood of God. Jesus taught this 
truth in the most emphatic language, and therefore 
that is the special message that he has brought to 
fallen humanity. In this way, by means of an honest 
and earnest study of the lives and teachings of dif- 
ferent prophets of the world, we can find out the 
central truth of each faith. Having done this it 
should be our highest aim to harmonize all these 
and to build up our spiritual nature on them. 

" The religious history of the present century has 
most clearly shown the need and necessity of the 
recognition of some universal truths in religion. 
For the last several years there has been a ceaseless 
yearning, a deej) longing after such a universal 
religion. The present parliament of religions, 
which we have been for the last few days celebrat- 
ing with so much edification and ennoblement, is 
the clearest indication of this universal longing, 
and whatever Hie prophets of despondency or the 
champions of orthodoxy may say or feel, every 
individual who has the least spark of spirituality 
alive in him must feel that this spiritual fellowship 
that we have enjoyed for the last several days 
within the precincts of this noble hall can not but be 
productive of much that leads toward the establish- 
ment of universal peace and good- will among men 
and nations of the world. * 

"To us of the Brahmo-Somaj this happy consum- 
mation, however partial and imperfect it may be for 
the time being, is nothing short of a sure foretaste 



142 woeld's eeligious congeesses. 

of the realization of the principle of the harmony of 
prophets. In politics and in national government 
it is now an established fact that in future countries 
and continents on the surface of the earth will be 
governed, not by mighty monarchies or aristocratic 
autocracies, but by the system of universal federa- 
tion. The history of political progress in your own 
country stands in noble evidence of my statement; 
and I am one of those who strongly believe that at 
some futuie time every country will be governed 
by itself as an independent unit, though in some 
respects may be dependent on some brother power 
or sister kingdom. What is true in politics will 
also be true in religion; and nations will recognize 
and realize the truths taught by the universal family 
of the sainted prophets of the world. 

"In the fourth place, we believe that the religion 
of the Brah mo- Soma.]' is a dispensation of this age; 
it is a message of unity and harmony, of universal 
amity and unification, proclaimed from above. We 
do not believe in the revelation of books and men, 
of histories and historical records. We believe in 
the infallible revelation of the Spirit — in the mes- 
sage that comes to man by the touch of the human 
spirit with the supreme Spirit. And can we even 
for a moment ever imagine that the Spirit of God 
has ceased to work in our midst? No, we can not. 
Even to-day God communicates his will to mankind 
as truly and as really as he did in the days of Christ 
or Moses, Mohammed or Buddba. 

"The dispensations of the world are not isolated 
units of truth, but, viewed as a whole, and followed 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 143 

out from the earliest to the latest in their historical 
sequence, they form a continuous chain, and each 
dispensation is only a link in this chain. It is our 
bounden duty to read the message of each dispensa- 
tion in the light that comes from above, and not 
according to the dead letter that might have been 
recorded in the past. The interpretation of letters 
and words, of books and chapters, is a drag behind 
on the workings of the Spirit. Truly hath it been 
said that the letter killeth. Therefore, brethren, 
let us seek the guidance of the Spirit, and interpret 
the message of the supreme Spirit by the help of his 
holy Spirit. 

"Thus the Brahmo-Somaj seeks to Hinduize 
Hinduism, Mohammedanize Mohammedanism, and 
Christianize Christianity. And whatever the cham- 
pions of the old Christian orthodoxy may say to the 
contrary, mere doctrine, mere dogma can never give 
life to any country or community. We are ready 
and most willing to receive the truths of the religion 
of Christ as truly as the truths of the religions of 
other prophets, but we shall receive these from the 
life and teachings of Christ himself, and not through 
the medium of any church or the so-called mis- 
sionary of Christ. If Christian missionaries have in 
them the meekness and humility and the earnest- 
ness of purpose that Christ lived in his own life, 
and so pathetically exemplified in his glorious death 
on the cross, let our missionary friends show it in 
their lives. 

"We are wearied of hearing the dogmas of Chris- 
tendom reiterated from Sunday to Sunday from 



144 world's religious congresses. 

hundreds of pulpits in India, and evangelists and 
revivalists of the type of Doctor Pentecost, who go 
to our country to sing to the same tune, only add 
to the chaos and confusion presented to the natives 
of India by the dry and cold lives of hundreds and 
thousands of his Christian brethren. They come to 
India on a brief sojourn, pass through the country 
like birds of passage, moving at a whirlwind speed, 
surrounded by Christian fanatics and dogmatists; 
and to us it is no matter of wonder that they do not 
see any good, or having seen it do not recognize it, 
in any of the ancient or modern religious systems 
of India. Mere rhetoric is no reason, nor is abuse 
an argument, unless it be the argument of a want of 
common sense. And we are not disposed to quarrel 
with any people if they are inclined to indulge in 
these two instruments generally used by those who 
have no truth on their side. For these our only 
feeling is a feeling of pity — unqualified, unmodi- 
fied, earnest pity — and we are ready to ask God to 
forgive them, for they know not what they say. 

"The fifth ideal of the Brahmo-Somaj is the ideal 
of the motherhood of God. I do not possess the 
powers, nor have I the time to dwell at length on 
this most sublime ideal of the church of Indian 
Theism. The world has heard of God as the almighty 
creator of the universe, as the omnipotent sovereign 
that rules the entire creation, as the protector, the 
saviour and the judge of the human race; as the 
supreme being, vivifying and enlivening the whole 
of the sentient and insentient nature. 

" We humbly believe that the world has yet to 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 145 

understand and realize, as it never has in the past, 
the tender and loving relationship that exists be- 
tween mankind and their supreme, universal, divine 
mother. Oh, what a world of thought and feeling- 
is centered in that one monosyllabic word ma, which 
in my language is indicative of the English word 
mother. Words can not describe, hearts can not 
conceive of the tender and self-sacrificing love of a 
human mother. Of all human relations the relation 
of mother to her children is the most sacred and 
elevating relation. And yet oar frail and fickle 
human mother is nothing in comparison with the 
divine mother of the entire humanity, who is the 
primal source of all love, of all mercy and all purity. 
Let us, therefore, realize that God is our mother, 
the mother of mankind, irrespective of the country 
or the clime in which men and women may be born. 
The deeper the realization of the motherhood of 
God the greater will be the strength and intensity 
of our ideas of the brotherhood of man and the 
sisterhood of woman. Once we see and feel lhat 
God is our mother, all the intricate problems of 
theology, all the puzzling quibbles of church gov- 
ernment, all the quarrels and wranglings of the 
so-called religious world will be solved and settled. 
We of the Brahmo-Somaj family hold that a vivid 
realization of the motherhood of God is the only 
solution of the intricate problems and differences 
in the religious world. 

"May the universal mother grant us all her bless- 
ings to understand and appreciate her sweet rela- 
tionship to the vast family of mankind. Let us 
10 



146 oeld's religious congresses. 

approach her footstool in the spirit of her humble 
and obedient children." 

One is inclined to speculate as to the origin and 
real force of this conception of the divine mother- 
hood, as to how far it is an appeal in behalf of di- 
vine attributes h ere to fore undervalue I in the relig- 
ious experiences of the Hindus, or as to how far it 
may be an aspiration after the realization of what 
has been known to Christians as the Spiritual Mot her; 
that is, heaven and the church, through which the 
Lord mediates his love and nurture to the feebleness 
of his children. The confidence expressed that the 
realization of the divine motherhood would resolve 
conflicts and bring in universal charity would indicate 
a faith in what all Christians have believed in, an, 1 too 
often sought to realize in human ecclesiastical orders 
in the name of God, when the divine of the Lord 
was not in them. In that case this ideal of the 
Brahmo-Somaj is simply faith in a universal church 
from the triumph sometime of the universal love of 
God. And it is at least evident that the plan of 
procedure, as Mr. ]N"agarkar says, "to Hinduize 
Hinduism, to Christianize Christianity," or in other 
words to make the subjects of any religion more 
faithful to its fundamental truths, is a witness to 
their belief that religio'us life and faith are from 
God alone; and being genuine from him, will make 
all worshipers one in him. This recalls the teach- 
ing of Swedenborg concerning the universal church 
of the Lord, that ' ' the Lord' s church is neither 
here nor there, but is everywhere, both within 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 147 

those kingdoms where the church is and outside of 
the same, wherever men lead a life according to the 
precepts of charity;" and that all in the whole world 
who are in love to the Lord, and charity toward 
the neighbor, are really one universal communion or 
church, " conjoined with the Lord's kingdom in the 
heavens, and thus conjoined with the Lord himself." 
Though he taught that of this universal church, 
which is as one grand man in the Lord' s sight, the 
church where the Word is known and loved, is as 
the heart and lungs; and that when the Lord would 
revive and restore the health of the church uni- 
versal, and institute a new dispensation, he does so 
by opening revelation and life afresh where the 
Word is, and that "he has done so even at this day 
in Christendom. It is obvious, at least, that some- 
thing has occurred to open the minds of all profess- 
ors of religion, and that influences are operative 
which are not very well understood, but which 
incite to a more free and tolerant, not to say char- 
itable and loving, search for fundamental principles. 
We may, therefore, close this general comparison 
with the writer's presentation of this position, on 
the last day of the parliament, in a paper on "Swe- 
denborg and the Harmony of Religion. " 

THE NEW CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

"Before the closing of this grand historic assem- 
bly, with its witness to the worth of every form of 
faith by which men worship God and seek com- 
munion with him, one word more needs be spoken, 
one more testimony defined, one more hope recorded. 



148 world's religious congresses. 

"Every voice has witnessed to the recognition of 
a new age. An age of inquiry, expectation, and 
experiment has dawned. New inventions are stir- 
ring men 1 s hearts, new ideals inspire their arts, new 
physical achievements beckon them on to one mar- 
velous mastery after another of the universe. And 
now we see that the new freedom of ' willing and 
thinking' has entered the realm of religion, and 
the faiths of the world are summoned to declare 
and compare not only the formulas of the past, but 
the movements of the present and the forecasts of 
the future. 

"One religious teacher, who explicitly heralded 
the new age before yet men had dreamed of its 
possibility, and referred its causes to great move- 
ments in the centers of influx in the spiritual world, 
and described it as incidental to great purposes in 
the providence of God, needs to be named from this 
platform — one who ranks with prophets and seers 
rather than with inquirers and speculators; a reve- 
lator rather than a preacher and interpreter; one 
whose exalted personal character and transcendent 
learning are eclipsed in the fruits of his mission as 
a herald of a new dispensation in religion, as the 
revealer of heavenly arcana, and 'restorer of the 
foundations of many generations'; who, ignored by 
his own generation, and assaulted by its successor, 
is honored and respected in the present, and awaits 
the thoughtful study which the expansion and cul- 
mination of the truth and the organic course of 
events will bring with to-morrow; ' the permeating 
and formative influence ' of whose teachings in the 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 149 

religious belief arrd life of to-day in Christendom is 
commonly admitted; who subscribed with his name 
on the last of his Latin quartos — Emanuel Sweden - 
borg, ' servant of the Lord Jesus Christ/ 



5 y> 



The address then proceeded to set forth Sweden- 
borg's claim of seership, his account of a last judg- 
ment accomplished in the spiritual world, and of 
the influences which would descend from new 
sources of influx in that world to bring in a new 
dispensation of the church among men, and that 
this new dispensation is inaugurated and defined 
among men by the revelation of the spiritual eense 
and divine meaning of the sacred Scriptures, and 
that the Lord by this means makes his second ad- 
vent, which is spiritual and universal. 

' ' The Christian world is incredulous of such an 
event, and for the most part heedless of its 
announcement ; but that does not much signify, 
except as it makes one with the whole course of his- 
tory as to the reception of divine announcements. 
What prophet was ever welcomed until the event 
had proved his message ? The question is not 
whether it meets the expectation of men; not 
whether it is what human prudence would forecast; 
but whether it reveals and meets the needs and 
necessities of the nations of the earth. ' My thoughts 
are not your thoughts, saith the Lord, neither are 
your ways my ways.' The great movements of 
divine providence are never what men anticipate, 
but they always provide what men need. And the 
appeal to the Parliament of Religions in behalf 



150 world's religious congresses. 

of the revelation announced from heaven is in its 
ability to prove its divinity by outreaching abun- 
dantly all human forecast whatsoever. Does it 
throw its light over the past and into the present, 
and project its promise into the future ? Does it 
illuminate and unify history, elucidate the conflict- 
ing movements of to-day, and explain the hopes 
and yearnings of the heart in every age and clime ? 

"There is. not time at this hour for exposition 
and illustration, only to indicate the catholicity of 
Swedenborg's teachings in their spirit, scope, and 
purpose. There is one God and one church. As 
God is one, the human race, in the complex move- 
ments of its growth and history, is before him as one 
greatest man. It has had its ages in their order, cor- 
responding to infancy, childhood, youth, and man- 
hood in the individual. As the one God is the 
Father of all, he has witnessed himself in every age 
according to its state and necessities. The divine 
care has not been confined to one line of human 
descent, nor the revelation of God's will to one set 
of miraculously given Scriptures. 

"The great religions of the world have their origin 
in that same Word or mind of God which wrote itself 
through Hebrew law-giver and prophet and became 
incarnate in Jesus Christ. He, as ' the Word which 
was in the beginning with God, and was God,' was 
the light of every age in the spiritual deyelopment 
of mankind, preserving and carrying over the life 
of each into the several streams of tradition in the 
religions of men, conserving and embodying all in 
the Hebrew Scriptures, fulfilling that in his own 



A EELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 151 

person, and now opening his divine mind in all that 
Scripture, the religions of the world are to be 
restored to unity, purified and perfected in him. 

' ' Nor is this with Swedenborg the liberal sentiment 
of good- will and the enthusiasm of hope, but the 
discovery of divine fact and the rational insight of 
spiritual understanding. He has shown that the 
sacred Scriptures are written according to the cor- 
respondence of natural with spiritual things, and 
that they contain an internal spiritual sense treat- 
ing of the providence of God in the dispensations of 
the church, and of the regeneration and spiritual 
life of the soul. Before Abraham there was the 
church of Noah, and before the word of Moses 
there was an ancient word, written in allegory and 
correspondences, which the ancients understood and 
loved, but in process of time turned into magic and 
idolatry. The ancient church scattered into Egypt 
and Asia, carried fragments of that ancient word, 
and preserved something of its representatives and 
allegories in scriptures and mythologies, from which 
have come the myths and fables of the oriental 
religions, modified according to nations and peoples, 
and revived from time to time in the teachings of 
leaders and prophets. 

"From the same ancient word Moses derived, 
under divine direction, the early chapters of Gene- 
sis, and to this in the order of providence was 
added the law and the prophets, the history of the 
incarnation, and the prophecy of a final kingdom of 
God, all so written as to contain an internal spirit- 
ual sense, corresponding with the letter, but dis- 



152 world's religious congresses. 

tinct from it, as the soul corresponds with the body 
and is distinct and transcends it. It is the opening 
of this internal sense in all the holy Scriptures, and 
not any addition to their letter, which constitutes 
the new and needed revelation of our day. The 
science of correspondences is the key which unlocks 
the Scriptures and discloses their internal contents. 
The same key opens the Scriptures of the Orient and 
traces them back to their source in primitive 
revelation. 

" If it shows that their myths and representatives 
have been misunderstood, misrepresented, and mis- 
applied, it shows also that the Hebrew and Christian 
Scriptures have been likewise perverted and falsified. 
It is that very fact which necessitates the revelation 
of their internal meaning, in which resides their 
divine inspiration and the life of rational under- 
standing for the separation of truth from error. 
The same rational light and science of interpreta- 
tion separates the great primitive truths from the 
corrupting speculations and traditions in all the 
ancient religions, and furnishes the key to unlock 
the myths and symbols in ancient Scriptures and 
worship. 

" If Swedenborg reveals errors and superstitions 
in the religions out of Christendom, so does he also 
show that the current Christian faith and worship 
is largely the invention of men and falsifying to the 
Christian's Bible. If he promises and shows true 
faith and life to the Christian from the Scriptures, 
so does he also to the Gentiles in leading them back 
to primitive revelation and showing them the mean- 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 158 

ing of their own aspirations for the light of life. If 
he sets the Hebrew and Christian word above all 
other sacred Scripture, it is because it brings, as now 
opened in its spiritual depths, the divine sanction to 
all the rest, and gathers their strains into its sub- 
lime symijhony of revelation. 

" So much for the indication of what Swedenborg 
does for catholic enlightenment in spiritual wisdom. 
As for salvation, he teaches that God has provided 
with every nation a witness of himself and means of 
eternal life. He is present by his Spirit with all. 
He gives the good of his love, which is life, inter- 
nally and impartially to all. All know that there is 
a God, and that he is to be loved and obeyed; that 
there is a life after death, and that there are evils 
which are to be shunned as sins against God. So 
far as any one so believes and so lives from a princi- 
ple of religion he receives eternal life in his soul, 
and after death instruction and perfection according 
to the sincerity of his life. 

"No teaching could be more catholic than this, 
showing that, ' Whosoever in any nation feareth 
God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him.' 
If he sets forth Jesus Christ as the only wise God, 
in whom is the fullness of the Godhead, it is Christ 
glorified and realizing to the mind the infinite and 
eternal Lover and Thinker and Doer, a real and per- 
sonal God, our Father and Saviour. If he summons 
all prophets and teachers to bring their honor and 
glory unto him, it is not as to a conquering rival, 
but as to their inspiring life, whose word they have 
spoken and whose work they have wrought. If he 



154 world's religious congresses. 

brings all good spirits in the other life to the 
acknowledgment of the glorified Christ as the only 
God, it is because they have in heart and essential 
faith believed in him and lived for him, in living- 
according to the precepts of their religion. He calls 
him a Christian who lives as a Christian; and he 
lives as a Christian who looks to the one God and 
does what he teaches, as he is able to know it. 1$ 
he denies reincarnation, so also does he deny sleep 
in the grave and the resurrection of the material 
body. If he teaches the necessity of regeneration 
and union with God, so also does he show that the 
subjugation and quiescence of self is the true ' Nir- 
vana,' opening consciousness to the divine life, and 
conferring the x>eace of harmony with God. If he 
teaches that man needs the Spirit of God for the 
subjugation of self, he teaches that this Spirit is 
freely imparted to whosoever will look to the Lord 
and shun selfishness as sin. If he teaches, thus, 
that faith is necessary to salvation, he teaches that 
faith alone is not sufficient, but faith which worketh 
by love. If he denies that salvation is of favor or 
immediate mercy, and affirms that it is v tal and the 
effect of righteousness, he also teaches that, the 
divine righteousness is imparted vitally to him who 
seeks it first and above all; and if he denies that 
several probations on earth are necessary to the 
working out of the issues of righteousness, it is 
because man enters a spiritual world after death in 
a spiritual body and personality, and in an environ- 
ment in which his ruling love is developed, his 
ignorance enlightened, his imperfections removed, 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 155 

his good beginnings perfected, until he is ready to 
be incorporated in the Grand Man of heaven, to 
receive and functionate his measure of the divine 
life and participate in the divine joy. And so I 
might go on. 

" My purpose is accomplished if I have won your 
respect, and interest in the teachings of this great 
apostle, who, claiming to be called of the Lord to 
open the Scriptures, presents a harmony of truths 
that would gather into its embrace all that is of 
value in every religion, and open out into a career 
of illimitable spiritual progress. 

"The most unimpassioned of men, perhaps be- 
cause he so well understood that his mission was 
not his own but the concern of Him who builds 
through the ages, Swedenborg wrote and published. 
The result is a library that calmly awaits the truth- 
seekers. If the religions of the world become 
disciples there, it will not be proselytism that 
will take them there, but the organic course of 
events in that providence which works on, silent 
but mighty, like the forces that poise planets and 
gravitate among the stars. 

' i Present history shows the effect of unsuspected 
causes. The Parliament of Religions is itself a tes- 
timony to unseen spiritual causes, and should at 
least incline to belief in Swedenborg' s testimony, 
that a way is open, both in the spiritual world and 
on earth, for a universal church in the faith of one 
visible God in whom is the Invisible, imparting 
eternal life and enlightenment to all from every 
nation who believe in him and work righteousness." 



CHAPTER IV. 

A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM — CONTINUED. 

HAYING now passed in review some of the 
best things the representatives of the several 
religions had to declare for themselves, and 
to prophesy for men, we may compare the positive 
declarations of various speakers upon the great 
subjects of religious thought. 

Central in every religion is the idea of God, for 
God to every man is what he regards as best and 
highest, what gives him the law of his being, and 
what he inwardly obeys in his doing. We begin, 
therefore, with the idea of God as interpreted by 
students of the ancient religions and by the teachers 
of the living religions represented in the World's 
Religious Congress. 

GOD. 

The first thing to remark is the universality of 
the idea that there is a God and that he is one. As 
Prince Momolu Massaquoi, of the Yey Nation in 
West Africa, a Christian, and educated in this coun- 
try, but just returned from his own people, who are 
pagans, said in speaking of their religion, "They 
worship the same God that you do. The mission- 
aries see them bow down before some natural object, 
and report that they are idolaters. But they do not 

(156) 



A KELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 157 

worship sucli things. They know that God is the 
creator of the universe, and they speak to him 
when they bow before what he has made, and think 
of him as a great spirit in the man form." And 
Swami Vivekananda, in speaking of the worship 
of the simple in India, said their idols are only 
symbols and reminders, and called attention to the 
fact that Christians, in common with all men, 
sought to make their spiritual ideas sensual by some 
symbolic object of sight. It is dem nstrabl ^ that 
all idolatry originated in this tendency, confirmed 
by evils with the mass, but never obliterating the 
idea of one God so completely as to hide it from 
the innocent and good. And if this be true, it 
admonishes us to look behind the doctrinal develop- 
ments of every religion for the great primitive con- 
cept that underlies them and constitutes for the good 
"the secret of the Lord with them that fear him." 
Prof. 1ST. Vallentine, in his paper on ' ' The Har- 
monies and Distinctions in the Theistic Teachings 
of the Various Historic Faiths," remarks that "at 
the outset we need to remind ourselves of the exceed- 
ing difficulty of the comparison or of precise and 
firm classification of the theistic faiths of mankind. 
They are all — at least all the ethnic faiths — devel- 
opments or evolutions, having undergone various 
and immense changes. Their evolutions amount to 
revolutions in some cases. They are not perma- 
nently marked by the same features, and will not 
admit the same predicates at different times. Some 
are found to differ more from themselves in their 
history than from one another." 



158 world's religious congresses. 

He finds, however, at the basis of them all the 
idea of God, unless Buddhism be excepted, and the 
absence of positive theistic teaching in this system 
he regards as negative failure to emphasize the idea, 
which certainly is not denied. "But," he adds, 
"if these various religions be compared in the light 
of a second principle in theistic teaching — that of 
monotheism — it is startling to find how terribly the 
idea of God, whose existence is so unanimously 
owned, has been misconceived and distorted. For 
taking the historic faiths in their fully developed 
form, only two, Christianity and Mohammedanism, 
present a pure and maintained monotheism. Zoro- 
astrianism can not be counted in here; though at 
first its Ahriman, or evil spirit, was not conceived of 
as a God, it afterward lapsed into theological dual- 
ism and practical polytheism. All the rest are pre- 
vailingly and discordantly polytheistic. They move 
off into endless multiplicity of divinities and gro- 
tesque degradations of their character. This fact 
does not speak well for the ability of the human 
mind, without supernatural help, to formulate and 
maintain the necessary idea of God worthily. 

"This dark and regretful phenomenon is, however, 
much relieved by several modifying facts. One is 
that the search-lights of history and philology 
reveal for the principal historic faiths, back of their 
stages and conditions of luxuriantly developed 
polytheism, the existence of an early, or possibly 
though not certainly primitive, monotheism. This 
point, I know, is strongly contested, especially by 
many whose views are determined by acceptance of 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 159 

the evolutionist hypothesis of the derivative origin 
of the human race; but it seems to me that the 
evidence, as made clear through the true historical 
method of investigation, is decisive for monotheism 
as the earliest known form of iheistic conception in 
the religions of Egypt, China, India, and the orig- 
inal Druidism, as well as of the two faiths already 
classed as asserting the divine unity. 

"Polytheisms are found to be actual growths 
Tracing them back they become simpler and simpler. 
' The younger the polytheism the fewer the gods,' 
until a stage is reached where God is conceived of 
as one alone This accords, too, as has been well 
pointed out, with the psychological genesis of ideas 
— the singular number preceding the plural, the 
idea of a god preceding the idea of gods, the affir- 
mation 'There is a God' going before the affirma- 
tion ' There are two or many gods.' 

"Another fact of belief is that the polytheisms 
have not held their fields without dissent and revolt. 
Over against the tendency of depraved humanity to 
corrupt the idea of God and multiply imaginary and 
false divinities, there are forces that act for correction 
and improvement. The human soul has been formed 
for the one true and only God. Where reason is 
highly developed and the testing powers of the 
intellect and conscience are earnestly applied to the 
problems of existence and duty, these grotesque 
and gross polytheisms prove unsatisfactory." 

Passing to another pjoint of comparison, the 
principle of personality, he notes that ' ' under this 



160 world's religious congresses. 

principle the religions of the world Ml into two 
classes: those which conceive of God as an intelli- 
gent being, acting in freedom, and those that con- 
ceive of him pantheistically as the sum of nature or 
the impersonal energy or soul of all things. In 
Christian teaching God is a personal being, with all 
the attributes or predicates that enter into the con- 
cept of such being. In the Christian Scriptures of 
the Old and New Testaments this conception is never 
for a moment lowered or obscured. God, though 
immanent in nature, tilling it with his presence and 
power, is yet its creator and preserver, keeping it 
subject to liis will and purposes, never confounded 
nor identified with it. He is the infinite, absolute 
personality. 

" In the early belief of Egypt, of China, of India, 
in the teaching of Zoroaster, of Celtic Druidism, of 
Assyrian and Babylonian faith, and in the best 
intuition of the Greek and Roman philosophers, 
without doubt God was apprehended as a personal 
God. Indeed, in almost the whole world's religious 
thinking this element of true theistic conceiDtion 
has had more or less positive recognition and main- 
tenance. It seems to have been spontaneously and 
necessarily demanded by the religious sense and life. 

"The human feeling of helplessness and need 
called for a God who could hear and understand, feel 
and act. And whenever thought rose beyond the 
many pseudo-gods to the existence of the one true 
God as a creator and ruler of the world, the ten 
thousand marks of order, plan, and purpose in nat- 
ure speaking to men's hearts and reason led up to 




w 




t 



:j 



H. DHARMAPALA, 

Buddhist, Ceylon. 



•A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 161 

the grand truth that the Maker of all is a thinker 
and both knows and wills. And so a relation of 
trust, fellowship, and intercourse was found and 
recognized. None of the real feelings of worship, 
love, devotion, gratitude, consecration, could live 
and act simply in the presence* of an impersonal, 
unconscious, fateful energy or order of nature. No 
consistent hope of a conscious personal future life 
can be established except as it is rooted in faith in a 
personal God. 

" And yet the personality of God has often been 
much obscured in the historic faiths. The obscura- 
tion has not come as a natural and spontaneous 
product of the religious impulse or consciousness, 
but of mystic speculative philosophies. The phe- 
nomenon presented by Spinozaism and later panthe- 
isms, in the presence of Christianity, was substan- 
tially anticipated again and again ages ago, in the 
midst of various religious faiths, despite their own 
truer visions of the eternal God. As we understand 
it, the philosophy of religion with Hinduism, the 
later Confucianism, developed Parseeism and Druid- 
ism is substantially pantheistic, reducing God to 
impersonal existence or the conscious factors and 
forces of cosmic order." 

The important points here are these: that at the 
root of all the historic faiths is the idea that there 
is a God and that he is one divine person, a lover, 
and thinker, and doer; but that this primitive idea 
is variously obscured by the sensuous persuasions on 

the one hand, and by speculative thinking on the 

11 - 



162 world's religious congresses. 

other; and that these developments, and revolts, 
and revivals, at different periods in their history, 
and on the part of their different sects, make any 
simple positive statement as the faith of any one of 
them difficult. 

The prevailing prepossessation on the part of Chris- 
tian scholars who contribute papers on comparative 
1 neology being the theory of progressive evolution, 
too much importance can not be given to facts like 
these presented by Professor Vallentine, which 
directly discredit the theory. The showing of one 
of the papers, for instance, that in the ancient 
Egyptian religion the one central religious notion 
was the nearness of the divine, and that in the 
Babylonian-Assyrian, on the other hand, the cen- 
tral idea was the separateness and transcendence of 
the divine, with the argument that these two ele- 
mental truths have been conveyed from Egypt and 
Babylonia to the nations of men, favors in such 
form the evolutionary leaning of thinkers. But it is 
not shown that the less-emphasized truth was absent 
from the religion which made the other prominent; 
nor is it necessary to conclude that either Egypt or 
Babylonia exercised any more than a modifying 
effect upon other religions, which together with 
them possessed both ideas as an inheritance from 
primitive revelation. 

Belief in primitive revelation as the origin of the 
idea of God was not prominent, however, though it 
might be confirmed by most of the facts cited in 
support of the natural development of the idea of 
God. An exception to the rule was the argument 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 163 

of the Rev. Maurice Phillips of Madras, India* that 
the primitive Hindu religion was from primitive 
revelation. 

In harmony with Professor Vallentine, quoted 
above, he contended that — 

"Two things are evident. That the higher we 
push our inquiries into the ancient religion of India 
the purer and simpler we find the conception of 
God, and that in proportion as we come down the 
stream of time the more corrupt and complex it 
becomes. We conclude, therefore, that the ancient 
Hindus did not acquire their knowledge of the 
divine attributes and functions empirically, for in 
that case we should find at the end what we now 
find at the beginning. Hence we must seek for a 
theory that will account alike for the acquisition of 
that knowledge, the godlike conception of Varuna 
and its gradual depravation which culminated in 
Brahma. 

' ' And what theory will cover these facts as well 
as the doctrine of a ' primitive revelation ' ? If we 
admit on the authority of the Bible that God 
revealed himself originally to man, the knowledge 
of the divine functions and attributes possessed by 
the ancient Hindus would be a reminiscence. And 
if we admit, on both the authority of the Bible and 
consciousness, the sinful tendency of human nature 
which makes the retention of divine knowledge 
either a matter of difficulty or aversion, it is easy to 
conceive that the idea of God as a spiritual personal 
being would gradually recede and ultimately disap- 
pear from the memory, while his attributes and 



164 world's religious congresses. 

functions would survive like broken fragments of a 
once united whole." 

The same theory will explain satisfactorily the 
fact that ancient tradition of the true God in Egypt 
should take on rather than grow out of the natural 
characteristic of its people, and the same primitive 
truth receive a different bent and emphasis in the 
Babylonian mind. And this alone will explain the 
undeniable fact that, in proportion as the simple 
idea of a heavenly Father, the Creator of the uni- , 
verse, is revolved in sensuous and speculative 
thought with any people the more ' ■ corrupt and 
complex it becomes." Still, as remarked before, it 
is not entirely lost, and is from time to time, in the 
history of every faith, grasped and asserted anew by 
some one ' ' pure in heart ' ' who ' ' sees God. ' ' It 
would be interesting, indeed, as showing to what 
the idea has come, to set side by side the answers of 
the several faiths, and sects even, to the direct ques- 
tion, "What have you to say of God?" It is 
impossible to gather more than general answers 
from the discussions before the parliament. 

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk, quoting a 
Yedic sage, who he says was inspired from the 
throne of mercy, and proclaimed in words of hope 
and consolation, 'I have found the Ancient One,' 
thus expounds the Hindu faith in God: "The 
Yedas proclaim, not a dreadful combination of 
unforgiving laws, not an endless prison of cause and 
effect, but that at the head of all these laws, in 
and through every particle of matter and force, 
stands one ' through whose command the wind 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 165 

blows, the lire burns, the clouds rain, and death 
stalks upon the earth.' And what is his nature? 

" He is every where, the pure and formless one, the 
almighty and the all-merciful. 'Thou art our 
father, thou art our mother, thou art our beloved 
friend, thou art the source of all strength. Thou 
art he that bearest the burdens of the universe; 
help me bear the little burden of this life.' Thus 
sang the Rishis of the Yeda. And how to worship 
him? Through love. ' He is to be worshiped as 
the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and 
the next life.' " And he adds, as giving definiteness 
to this idea, that the Hindus believe Krishna to have 
been " Gfod incarnate on earth." • 

As a Christian estimate of the Hindu thought of 
God the following from Rev. R ? A. Hume may be 
illustrative: 

"Both Christian and Hindu thought recognize an 
infinite being with whom is bound up man's 
rational and spiritual life. Both magnify the 
indwelling of this infinite being in every part of the 
universe. Both teach that this great being is ever 
revealing itself; that the universe is a unit, and that 
all things come under universal laws of the infinite. 

"To Christianity God is the heavenly Father, 
always and infinitely good; God is love. 

" To philosophical Hinduism man is an emanation 
from the infinite, which, in the present stage of 
existence, is the exact result of this emanation in 
previous stages of existence. His moral sense is an 
illusion, for he can not sin. 



166 

"To popular Hinduism man is partially what he is 
to philosophical Hinduism, determined by fate; 
partially he is thought of as a created being more or 
less sinful, dej^endent on God for favor or disfavor. 

"To Christianity man is the child of his heavenly 
Father, sinful and often erring, yet longed for and 
sought after by the Father. 5 ' 

In a remarkably definite and explicit paper on 
"Zoroastrianism," by Jinan ji Jamshodji Modi, we 
are told of the idea of God among the Parsees: 

"Zoroastrianism, or Parseeism — by whatever 
name the system may be called — is a monotheistic 
form of religion. It believes in the existence of one 
God, whom it knows under the names of Mazda, 
Ahura, and Ahura- Mazda, the last form being one 
that is most commonly met with in the latter writ- 
ings of the Avesta. The first and the greatest truth 
that dawns upon the mind of a Zoroastrian is that 
the great and the infinite universe, of which he is an 
infmitesimally small part, is the work of a poAverful 
hand — the result of a master-mind. The first and 
the greatest conception of that master-mind, Ahura- 
Mazda, is that, as the name implies, he is the Omnis- 
cient Lord, and as such he is the ruler of both the 
material and immaterial world, the corporeal and 
the incorporeal world, the visible and the invisible 
world. The regular movements of the sun and the 
stars, the periodical waxing and waning of the moon, 
the regular way in which the sun and the clouds 
are sustained, the regular flow of waters and the 
gradual growth of vegetation, the rapid movements 



A RELIGTOUS SYMPOSIUM. 167 

of the winds and the regular succession of light and 
darkness, of day and night, with their accompani- 
ments of sleep and wakefulness; all these grand 
and striking phenomena of nature point to and bear 
ample evidence of the existence of an almighty 
power, who is not only the creator but the preserver 
of this great universe, who has not only launched 
that universe into existence with a premeditated 
plan of completeness, but who, with the controlling 
hand of a father, preserves by certain fixed laws 
harmony and order here, there, and everywhere. 

"As Ahurj-Mazda is the ruler of the physical 
world, so he is the ruler of the spiritual world. 
His distinguished attributes are good mind, right- 
eousness, desirable control, piety, perfection, and 
immortality. He is the beneficent Spirit from whom 
emanate all good and all piety. He looks into 
the hearts of men, and sees how much of the 
good and of the piety that have emanated from 
him has made its home there, and thus rewards the 
virtuous and punishes the vicious. Of course 
one sees at times in the plane of this world moral 
disorders and want of harmony, but then the pres- 
ent state is only a part, and that a very small 
part, of his scheme of moral government. As the 
ruler of the world, Ahura-Mazda hears the prayers 
of the ruled. He grants the prayers of those who 
are pious in thoughts, pious in words, and pious in 
deeds. ' He not only rewards the good, but punishes 
the wicked. All that is created, good or evil, fort- 
une or misfortune, is his work.' " 

He combats the misunderstanding that Zoroaster 



168 world's religious congresses. 

preaches dualism. Ahura-Mazda is supreme; the 
good and evil principles which contend in the world 
and in man are under him. He cites in explanation 
the Christian doctrine of the devil and hell, and 
continues: "Consequently, though the Almighty 
is the creator of all, a part of the creation is said to 
be created by the good principle and a part by the 
evil principle. Thus, for example, the heavenly 
bodies, the earth, water, fire, horses, dogs, and such 
other objects are the creation of the good principle, 
and serpents, ants, locusts, etc., are the creation of 
the evil principle. In short, those things that con- 
duce to the greatest good of the greatest number of 
mankind fall under the category of the creations of 
the good principle, and those that lead to the con- 
trary result, under that of the creations of the evil 
principle. This being the case, it is incumbent 
upon men to do actions that would support the 
cause of the good principle and destroy that of the 
evil one. Therefore, the cultivation of the soil, 
the rearing of the domestic animals, etc., on the 
one hand, and the destruction of wild animals and 
other noxious creatures on the other, are considered 
meritorious actions by the Parsees. 

"As there are two primeval principles under 
Ahura-Mazda that produce our material world, so 
there are two principles inherent in the nature of 
man, which encourage him to do*good or tempt him 
to do evil. One asks him to support the cause of 
the good principle, the other to support that of the 
evil principle." 

The idea of God in orthodox Judaism, according 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 169 

to Rabbi Mendes, is "expressed in the creeds for- 
mulated by Maimonides, as follows : 

' ' We believe in God the creator of all, a unity, a 
spirit who never assumed corporeal form, eternal, 
and he alone ought to be worshiped. 

"We unite with Christians in the belief that 
revelation is inspired. We unite with the founder 
of Christianity that not one jot or tittle of the law 
should be changed. Hence we do not accept a first- 
day Sabbath, etc. 

"We unite in believing that God is omniscient 
and just, good, loving, and merciful. 

" We unite in the belief in the coming Messiah. 

"We unite in our belief in immortality. In 
these Judaism and Christianity agree." 

The definitions of Rabbi Wise, less specific in 
statement, are explicit as giving authority of reve- 
lation to only such passages in the Hebrew Script- 
ures as represent God to have spoken of himself, 
his name, or his attributes. 

"Judaism is the complex of Israel's religious 
sentiments ratiocinated to conceptions in harmony 
with its Jehovistic God-cognition. 

"These conceptions made permanent in the con- 
sciousness of this people are the religious knowl- 
edges which form the substratum to the theology of 
Judaism. The Thorah maintains that its 'teaching 
and canon' are divine. Man's knowledge of the 
true and the good comes directly to human reason 
and conscience (which is unconscious reason) from 
the supreme and universal reason, the absolutely 
true and good; or it comes to him indirectly from 



170 world's religious congresses. 

the same source by the manifestations of nature, 
the facts of history, and man's power of induction. 
This principle is in conformity with the second post- 
ulate of theology, and its extension in harmony 
with the standard of reason. 

"All knowledge of God and his attributes, the 
true and the good, came to man by successive reve- 
lations of the indirect kind first, which we may call 
natural revelation, and the direct kind afterward, 
which we may call transcendental revelation. Both 
these revelations concerning God and his substantial 
attributes, together with their historical genesis, are 
recorded in the Thorah in the seven holy names of 
God, to which neither prophet nor philosopher in 
Israel added even one, and all of which constantly 
recur in all Hebrew literature. 

"What we call the God of revelation is actually 
intended to designate God as made known in the 
transcendental revelations, including the successive 
God-ideas of natural revelation. His attributes of 
relation are made known only in such passages of 
the Thorah. in which he himself is reported to have 
spoken to man of himself, his name, and his attri- 
butes, and not by any induction or reference from 
any law, story, or doing ascribed to God anywhere. 
The prophets only expand or define those concep- 
tions of deity which these passages of direct tran- 
scendental revelation in the Thorah contain. There 
exists no other source from which to derive the cog- 
nition of the God of revelation. ' ? 

It is known that Mohammedanism was a revolt 
against idolatry, and that its founder claimed that 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 171 

in so doing he had returned to the pure religion of 
Abraham. Still, "Mohammedanism is no more a 
reformed Judaism than it is a form of Christianity. 
It was essentia] ly a new religion/' It is worthy of 
notice that the best account of Mohammedanism 
presented to the congress was by Doctor Washburn, 
president of Roberts College, Constantinople, and 
not by the disciple of Islam. Doctor Washburn 
gives the doctrine of God as stated by a Mohamme- 
dan authority as follows : 

"God is one and eternal. He lives, and is 
almighty. He knows all things, hears all things, 
sees all things. He is endowed with will and action. 
He has neither form nor feature, neither bounds, 
limits, or numbers, neither parts, multiplications, or 
divisions, because he is neither body nor matter. 
He has neither beginning nor end. He is self -exist- 
ent, without generation, dwelling, or habitation. 
He is outside the empire of time, unequaled in his 
nature as in his attributes, which, without being- 
foreign to his essence, do not constitute it." 

Doctor Washburn continues: ' ' It has often been 
said that the God of Islam is simply a God of 
almighty power, while the God of Christianity is a 
God of infinite love and perfect holiness; but this is 
not a fair statement of truth. The ninety-nine 
names of God which the good Moslem constantly 
repeats assign these attributes to him. The fourth 
name is * The Most Holy ' ; the twenty-ninth, ' The 
Just'; the forty-sixth, 'The All Loving'; the first 
and most common is 'The Merciful,' and the moral 
attributes are often referred to in the Koran. In 



172 world's religious congresses. 

truth there is no conceivable perfection which the 
Moslem would neglect to attribute to God. 

" Their conception of him is that of an absolute 
oriental monarch, and his unlimited power to do 
what he pleases makes entire submission to his will 
the first, most prominent duty. The name which 
they gave to their religion implies this. It is Islam, 
which means submission or resignation; but a king 
may be good or bad, wise or foolish, and the Moslem 
takes as much pains as the Christian to attribute to 
God all wisdom and all goodness. 

"The essential difference in the Christian and 
Mohammedan conception of God lies in the fact 
that the Moslem does not think of this great King 
as having anything in common with his subjects, 
from whom he is infinitely removed. The idea of 
the incarnation of God in Christ is to them not only 
blasphemous but absurd and incomprehensible; and 
the idea of fellowship with God, which is expressed 
in calling him our Father, is altogether foreign to 
Mohammedan thought." 

Confucianism in its modern disciples seems to 
have little dehnite idea of God, though a central 
thought of spirits and of a supreme spirit answers to 
them for the divine, which they denominate heaven. 
Confucianism was represented in the congress by a 
prize essay, and also by an address from Pung 
Quang Yu, a disciple, and secretary of the Chinese 
legation at Washington. The x>rize essay says: 

"The most important thing in the superior man's 
learning is to fear disobeying heaven's will. There- 
fore in our Confucian religion the most important 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 173 

thing is to follow the will of heaven. The book of 
Yik King says: ' In the changes of the world there 
is a great supreme which produces two principles, 
and these two principles are Yin and Yang. By 
supreme is meant the spring of all activity. Our 
sages regard Yin and Yang and the five elements as 
acting and reacting on each other without ceasing, 
and this doctrine is all-important, like as the hinge 
of a door. 

' ' The incessant production of all things depends on 
this as the tree does on the root. Even all human 
affairs and all good are also dependent on it; there- 
fore it is called the supreme, just as we speak of the 
extreme points of the earth as the north and' south 
poles. 

" By great supreme is meant that there is noth- 
ing above it. But heaven is without sound or smell, 
therefore the ancients spoke of the infinite and the 
great supreme. The great supreme producing Yin 
and Yang is law -producing forces. When Yin and 
Yang unite they produce water, fire, wood, metal, 
earth. When these five forces operate in harmony 
the four seasons come to pass. The essences of the 
infinite, of Yin and Yang, and of the five elements, 
combine, and the heavenly become male, and the 
earthly become female. When these powers act on 
each other all things are produced and reproduced 
and developed without end. 

"As toman, he is the best and most intelligent 
of all. This is what is meant in the book of Chung 
Yung when it says that what heaven has given is 
the spiritual nature. This nature is law. All men 



174 world's religious congresses. 

are thus born and have this law. Therefore it is 
Meneius says that all children love the parents and 
when grown up all respect their elder brethren. If 
men only followed the natural bent of this nature, 
then all would go the right way; hence, the Chung 
Yung says: ' To follow nature is the right way.' 

' ' The choicest product of Yin, Yang, and the five 
elements in the world is man; the rest are refuse 
products. The choicest among the choice ones are 
the sages and worthies, and the refuse among them 
are the foolish and the bad. And as man's body 
comes from the Yin and man's soul from the Yang 
he can not be perfect. This is what the Lung 
philosophers called the material nature. Although 
all men have at birth a nature for goodness, still if 
there is nothing to fix it, then desires arise and pas- 
sions rule, and men are not far from being like 
beasts; hence Confucius says: 'Men's nature is 
originally alike, but in practice men become very 
different.' The sages, knowing this, sought to fix 
the nature with the principles of moderation, 
uprightness, benevolence, and righteousness. 
Heaven appointed rulers and teachers, who in turn 
established worship and music to improve men's 
disposition and set up governments and penalties in 
order to check men's wickedness. The best among 
the people are taken into schools where they study 
wisdom, virtue, benevolence, and righteousness, so 
that they may know beforehand how to conduct 
themselves as rulers or ruled. 

"And lest, after many generations, there should 
be degeneration and difficulty in finding the truth, 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 175 

the principles of heaven and earth, of men and 
of all things, have been recorded in the Book of 
Odes for the use of after generations The Chung 
Yung calls the practice of wisdom religion. Our 
religion well knows heaven's will; it looks on all 
under heaven as one family, great rulers as elder 
branches in their parents' clan, great ministers as 
chief officers of this clan, and people at large as 
brothers of the same parents; and it holds that all 
things should be enjoy.ed in common, because it 
regards heaven and earth as the parents of all alike. 
And the commandment of the Confucian is, ' Fear 
greatly lest you offend against heaven.' ' 

It thus appears that the disciples of Confucius have 
given less attention to definition of the divine than 
to practice in harmony with " heaven's will." Pung 
Quang Yu in his address gives some account of 
worship, as follows : 

" ' My prayers,' says Confucius, 'were offered up 
long ago.' The meaning he wishes to convey is 
that he considers his prayers to consist in living a 
virtuous life and in constantly obeying the dictates 
of conscience. 

" He therefore looks upon prayers as of no avail 
to deliver any one from sickness. ' He who sins 
against heaven,' again he says, 'has no place to 
pray.' What he means is that even spirits have no 
power to bestow blessings on those who have sinned 
against the decrees of heaven. 

"The wise and the good, however, make use of 
offerings and sacrifices simply as a means of purify- 
ing themselves from the contamination of the world, 



176 world's religious congresses. 

so that they may become susceptible of spiritual 
influences and be in sympathetic touch with the 
invisible world, to the end that calamities may be 
averted and blessings secured thereby. Still, sacri- 
fices can not be offered by all persons without dis- 
tinction. Only the emperor can offer sacrifices to 
heaven. Only governors of provinces can offer sac- 
rifices to the spirits of mountains and rivers, land 
and agriculture. Lower officers of the government 
can offer sacrifices only to their ancestors of the five 
preceding generations, but are not allowed to offer 
sacrifices to heaven. The common people, of course, 
are likewise denied this privilege. They can offer 
sacrifices only to their ancestors. 

" All persons, from the emperor down to the com- 
mon people, are strictly required to observe the wor- 
ship of ancestors. The only way in which a virtuous 
man and a dutiful son can show his sense of obliga- 
tion to the authors of his being is to serve them when 
dead as when they were alive, when departed as 
when present. It is for this reason that the most 
enlightened rulers have always made filial duty the 
guiding principle of government. Observances of 
this character have nothing to do with religious cel- 
ebrations and ceremonies." 

It is commonly believed that there is no theism 
in the teachings of Buddha. H. Dharmaijala, in 
his extended • exposition of Buddhism, said that 
"to guide humanity in the right path a Messiah 
appears from time to time," but adds: 

" In the sense of a supreme creator, Buddha says 
that there is no such being, accepting the doctrine 



A KELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 177 

of evolution as the only true one, with its corollary, 
the law of cause and effect. He condemns the idea 
of a creator, but the supreme God of the Brahmins 
and minor Gods are accepted; but they are subject 
to the law of cause and effect. This supreme God 
is all love, all merciful, all gentle, and looks upon 
all beings with equanimity. Buddha teaches men 
to practice these four supreme virtues. But there 
is no difference between the perfect man and this 
supreme God of the present world. 

"The teachings of the Buddha on evolution are 
clear and expansive. We are asked to look upon 
the cosmos ' as a continuous process unfolding itself 
in regular order in obedience to natural laws. We 
see in it all not a yawning chaos restrained by the 
constant interference from without of a wise and 
beneficent external power, but a vast aggregate of 
original elements perpetually working out their own 
fresh redistribution in accordance with their own 
inherent energies. He regards the cosmos as an 
almost infinite collection of material, animated by 
an almost infinite sum total of energy, which is 
called Akasa. 1 have used the above definition of 
evolution as given by Grant Allen in his 'Life of 
Darwin,' as it beautifully expresses the general zed 
ijlea of Buddhism. We do not postulate that man s 
evolution began from the protoplasmic stage; but 
we are asked not to speculate on the origin of life, 
on the origin of the law of cause and effect, etc. So 
far as this great law is concerned we say that it con- 
trols the phenomena of human life as well as those 
of external nature; the whole knowable universe 
forms one undivided whole. 

12 



178 world's religious congresses. 

"Buddha promulgated his system of philosophy 
after having studied all religions. And in the 
Brahma-jola surra sixty-two creeds are discussed. 
In the Kalama, the sutra, Buddha says: 

" ' Do not believe in what ye have heard. Do not 
believe in traditions, because they have been handed 
down for many generations. Do not believe in any- 
thing because it is renowned and spoken of by 
many. Do not believe merely because the written 
statement of some old sage is produced. Do not 
believe in conjectures. Do not believe in that as 
truth to which you have become attached by habit. 
Do not believe merely on the authority of your 
teachers and elders. Often observation and analysis, 
when the result agrees with reason, are conducive to 
the good and gain of one and all. Accept and live 
up to it.' " 

One looks to the gentle Dharmapala for precepts 
of righteousness and purity rather than for philo- 
sophical insight; but this quotation here cited ex- 
presses just the one mission of Buddhism, to make 
such men full of the spirit of purity and love, which 
" accepts and lives up to " what it perceives to be 
right. The divine, which is man's ideal highest 
and best, is realized in Buddha, and to be with him 
where lie is, is the aspiration of life with his disciples^ 
"To realize the unseen is the goal of the student of 
Buddha's teachings, and such a one has to lead an 
absolutely pure life. Buddha says: 

"'Let him fulfill all righteousness; let him be 
devoted to that quietude of heart which springs from 
within; let him not drive back the ecstasy of con- 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 179 

templation; let him look through things; let him be 
much alone. Fulfill all righteousness for the sake 
of the living, and for the sake of the blessed ones 
that are dead and gone.' '' 

If we turn to the Christian presentation of the 
idea of God, we travel for the most part through a 
dreary waste of philosophy. It may be confessed, 
indeed, that the design of these learned disquisi- 
tions is to show the defensibility of God's self- 
revelation in the sacred Scriptures, and to justify it 
to reason; but the amount and preponderance of 
such reasoning is an indication of failing faith in 
revelation, and of the aspiring assumption of 
human intelligence in Christendom. But even here 
we find something new; a reconstruction of the old 
theistic arguments into harmony with the accepted 
importance of the idea of the divine immanence in 
nature and man, and a certain revolt of reason 
against unthinkable dogma. Perhaps it is because 
dogmatic theology has obscured the simple majesty 
of God's self- revelation in the Scriptures as the self- 
subsisting lover and thinker and doer, who is 
immanent by his Spirit in nature and in man, 
whose providence is the operation of his love and 
wisdom, according to their own law impressed upon 
the universe, who speaks to man by his Word and 
reveals himself and his love and redeeming power 
in Jesus Christ; perhaps it is because the mind 
seeks for this truth in the nature of things, which 
dogmatic theology has overlaid and obscured in 
Scripture, that we find in these presentations so 



180 world's religious congresses. 

little argument from revelation to faith, and so 
mnch argument from the necessities of the case, 
with critical examination of the processes by which 
we know that we know that God is. Certain it is, 
that in a careful review of all these declarations 
concerning God Christian scholars will be found in 
the attitude, not of apostles teaching the nations out 
of the church, but of apologists trying to extract 
from the nature of things reasons in defense of the 
idea of a heavenly Father. The effort is legitimate 
if necessary for any reason, and the arguments are 
an improvement on the old; but what does it come 
to? We may give the answer in the closing words 
of Doctor Momerie's paper on "The Moral Evi- 
dences of a Divine Existence": 

"To sum up in one sentence — all knowledge, 
whether practical or scientific, nay, the commonest 
experience of every-day life, implies the existence 
of a mind which is omnipresent and eternal, while 
the tendency toward righteousness, which is so 
unmistakably manifest in the course of history, 
together with the response which this tendency 
awakens in our own hearts, combine to prove that 
the infinite thinker is just and kind and good. It 
must be because he is always with us that we some- 
times imagine that he is nowhere to be found." 

If any look for an exposition of the doctrine of 
one God in three coequal and coeternal persons, 
the prevalence of this faith may be found incident- 
ally in forms of speech founded on it, and ideas of 
divine government derived from it, but in exposition 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 181 

it is greatly modified. In a paper on "Christ the 
Reason of the Universe," the Rev. James W. Lee 
presents the doctrine of the trinity in God in a way 
that shows the effort of reason to reconcile it with 
the absolute oneness of the Divine Being, and at 
the same time illustrates the intricacy of the proc- 
esses of thought in the new intellectual activity of 
Christendom. He says: "What man seeks, and 
has always sought, is such a philosophy or synthesis 
of the facts of nature, of man, and of God as har- 
monizes him with himself, with his world, and with 
the being he calls God. We call Christ the reason 
of the universe because he brings to thought such a 
synthesis of nature, man, and God as harmonizes 
human life with itself, and with the facts of nature 
and God." 

In the elucidation of this theme he seeks to show 
that a " self -causative, self -active, omnipotent en- 
ergy is the deepest thing, and the first thing in the 
universe;" and again that self -consciousness, which 
is the ' ' complete form of self -activity, self -causation, 
and self -relation," contains within itself "the sub- 
ject that thinks, and the object that is thought, and 
also the identity of subject and object in a living, 
intelligent personality." He then proceeds as fol- 
lows: 

"In the absolute self -consciousness of God there 
is subject and object and the identity of subject and 
object in one divine personality. But it is neces- 
sary that what the absolute subject thinks must be, 
and must also be as perfect as the absolute subject. 
It is necessary also that the absolute object must be 



182 world's religious congresses. 

one. So in the divine self-consciousness the absolute 
subject is Father, and the thought of the Father, or 
the absolute object, is the Son. But as the Son is as 
perfect as the Father it is necessary that what he 
thinks must be also. 

' ' Here it is that Christian philosophy and theology 
gets the imperfect world. The Son thinks himself 
first as eternally derived, as eternally begotten. In 
the fact that the Son differs from the first person 
in that he is eternally derived from him is found 
the thought of limitation, which is expressed in the 
imperfect world in all stages and grades of existence, 
from pure passivity up through space and atoms, 
and force and compounds, and plants and animals to 
man, who is in the image of God and at the top of 
creation. In God as Father the idea of transcend- 
ence is met, and thus we have the truth of mono- 
theism; in God the Son the idea of an indwelling 
God is met, and we have the truth of polytheism. 
In God the Spirit the idea of God iDervading the 
world is reached, and we have the truth of pantheism. 
Here we have a trinity not such as would be con- 
stituted by three judges in a court, or by three 
things imagined under sensible forms. The relations 
between three such judges or three such sensible 
things would be mechanical and accidental and not 
absolute and essential. The trinity of the Christian 
church is not simply the aggregation of three indi- 
viduals or the unity of three mathematical points. 
The trinity revealed in the Christian Scriptures is 
such as makes a concrete unity through and by 
means of difference. This trinity makes a unity, 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 183 

the distinguishing feature of which is ' fullness ' and 
not emptiness. It is a trinity constitutive of a real, 
experimental, and knowable unity. God is revealed 
in the Scriptures as intelligence, life, and love, and 
the living process of each is triune. The terms of 
a self, whose living function is intelligence, are 
three, subject, object, and the organic identity of 
the two. The terms of such a self are necessarily 
three, and yet its nature is necessarily one. 

"If God is intelligent he is triune, because the 
process of intelligence is triune. There can not be 
mind without self-consciousness, and the object of 
the eternal self -consciousness is the eternal Logos, 
who is the full and complete expression of the 
eternal mind. Time or space is not necessary to 
the complete act of self-consciousness. 

"The movement of the eternal mind passing 
through the Son into the Holy Spirit, and then 
through the finite world and the Christian church 
back to himself, has been called a procession. A 
procession, because infinite, eternally complete. 
Thus, while God eternallv goes from himself he 
eternally returns to himself with spirits redeemed 
by the Son, and regenerated by the Spirit, capable 
of sharing the love and joy and life of himself. 

" This view makes it necessary that God through 
the Son create the world. At this doctrine some 
people will stagger. One thing is sure, God has 
created the world, and if the necessity for creating 
it was not in his nature, then creation is an accident. 
There is no reason where there is no necessity. The 
necessity for a thing is the reason for it. If there 



184 world's religious congresses. 

was no necessity for creation, the creative act 
becomes wholly irrational. God is represented in 
the very first chapter of the Bible as Creator. It is 
necessary that a creator create. 

"It is to be remembered, however, while it is 
necessary that God create, this is a necessity that 
falls within his own nature. This means that God 
is essentially a creative being. There is no necessity 
outside of God by which he is compelled to do any- 
thing. This would be the establishment of a fate 
greater than God. All necessity relating to God 
falls within his own being and is that which defines 
what he rationally and essentially is. 

u But while the doctrine makes the creation of 
the finite world necessary, it does not make sin, or 
the self-assertion of a finite spirit necessary. But 
man is free, with a body made of the earth at the 
bottom of himself, and with a spirit the direct gift 
of God at the top of himself. Between man as body 
and man as spirit there is the realm of choice. If 
he acts with reference to himself as body simply, he 
sins. The possibility of sin in the case of man is 
found in that in his personality there come together 
a limited and an unlimited self, a carnal and a 
spiritual self, a self in time and space and a self 
under the form of eternity. 

' ' This doctrine helps us again to account for the 
two poles of man's moral and intellectual con- 
sciousness. Human nature has a dual constitution. 
It is the unity of two principles, a principle of 
thought and will and a principle of truth and right. 
As a physical being he is dual. The subjective side 



A EELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 185 

of his physical self is hunger, the objective side 01 
his physical nature is food. Now., before he can 
live as a physical being the hunger and the food 
must come together. On his subjective side man 
feels he is free, but on his objective side he feels he 
must obey. How is he to be free and obedient at 
the same time % When we remember that the nature 
of man is a reproduction of the nature of the Son of 
God, and that the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the 
Father and the Son, flows out into humanity to en- 
lighten, to quicken, to convince of sin, and then to 
renew, to regenerate and to organize into the Chris- 
tian church, we will see that the truth the Spirit 
presents to man's intellect is adapted to it as food 
is to his hunger, and that the law the Spirit stimu- 
lates and urges man to obey is the law of his own 
nature. 

" This doctrine gives us the meaning of the strug- 
gle, conflict, pain, which are apparent throughout 
the realm of nature and human life. Liebnitz, 
looking at the top of things, at health, at joy, sun- 
shine, laughter, and prosperity, said this was the 
best possible world. Schopenhauer, looking at the 
bottom, at storms, th orris, disease, poverty, death, 
said this was the worst possible world. The 
entrance of the divine procession into the limitations 
of time and space is advertised by the storm and 
stress, the ceaseless clash and strife which begin 
among the atoms. This struggle is kept up 
through all stages of organization until when we 
reach the plane of human life it is expressed in cries 
and wails, in tragedies, epics, litanies, which become 



186 

the most interesting part of human literature. Into 
this struggle comes the Son of Man and the S<>n 
of God. He meets it, endures it, and conquers 
it, and is crucified, and his crucifixion is the cul- 
mination of the process of trial and storm and strife 
which begun with the atoms and continued through 
the whole course of nature. When Christ comes 
up from the dead then the truth of the ages gets 
defined, that through suffering and denial and 
crucifixion is the way to holiness and everlasting 
life. From thenceforth a redeemed humanity 
becomes the working hypothesis and the ideal of 
the race. Then it comes to be seen that the whole 
movement of God looks to the organization of the 
human race in Jesus Christ, the reason, the logos, 
the plan and the ideal framework of the universe." 

It needs to be borne in mind, however, when seek- 
ing help of philosophy, that the very ideas with 
which it concerns itself are derived from revelation. 
As Bishop Keane said, in preparing the way for his 
discussion of the "incarnation idea in all history" : 
"The sublime conception of the existence of God 
and of the existence of revelation is not a spon- 
taneous generation from the brain of man. Tyndal 
and Pasteur have demonstrated that there is no 
spontaneous generation from the inorganic to the 
organic. Just as little is there, or could there be, a 
spontaneous generation of the idea of the infinite 
from the brain of the finite. The fact, in each case, 
is the result of a touch from above. All humanity 
points back to a golden age, when man was taught 



A "RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 187 

of the divine by the divine, that in that knowledge 
lie might know why he himself existed, and how 
his life was to be shaped." 

The necessity for a revealing God to be in con- 
tinual revelation, and to a fallen race, in continual 
adaptation to its necessities, inevitably links the idea 
of incarnation with the Christian conception of the 
divine, and its fullest statement that which accounts 
for the appearance of Jesus Christ. 

INCARNATION. 

Bishop Keane, in tracing the history of the idea, 
shows it to be universal. The "primitive teaching 
of man by his creator lias been transformed in the 
lapse of ages, in the vicissitudes of distant wander- 
ings, of varying fortunes, and of changing culture; 
still, the comparative study of ancient religions 
shows that in them all there has existed one central, 
pivotal concept, dressed, indeed, in various garbs of 
myth and legend and philosophy, yet ever recogniz- 
ably the same — the concept of . the fallen race of 
man and of a future restorer, deliverer, redeemer, 
who, being human, should yet be different from and 
above the merely human." 

Pointing out, then, the difference in the Eastern 
and Western concepts of man, leading to different 
ideas of the indwelling of the divine, and tracing 
the voice of the prophets pointing forward to him 
that is to come, and showing in its fulfillment the 
divine answer to a universal expectation and a 



188 world's religious congresses. 

universal need, he presents the reasonableness of 
the incarnation as follows: 

'•Reason sees that the finite could note thus 
mount to the infinite any more than matter of itself 
could mount to spirit. But could not the infinite 
stoop to the finite and lift it to his bosom and unite 
it with himself, wdth no confounding of the finite 
with the infinite nor of the infinite with the finite, 
yet so that they shall be linked in one? Here rea- 
son can discern no contradiction of ideas, nothing 
beyond the power of the infinite. But could the 
infinite stoop to this? Reason sees that to do so 
would cost the infinite nothing, since he is ever his 
unchanging self; it sees, moreover, that since crea- 
tion is the offspring not of his need but of his 
bounty, of his love, it would be most worthy of 
infinite love to thus perfect the creative act, to thus 
lift up the creature and bring all things into unity 
and harmony. Then must reason declare it is not 
only x>ossible but it is most fitting that it should be so. 

"Moreover, we see that it is this very thing that 
all humanity has been craving for, whether intel- 
ligently or not. This very thing all religions have 
been looking forward to or have been groping for in 
the dark. Turn we then to himself and ask: ' Art 
thou he who is to come, or look we for another?' 
To that question he must answer, for the world 
needs and must have the truth. Meek and humble 
of heart though he be, the world has a right to 
know whether he be indeed 'the Expected of the 
Nations, the Immanuel, Lord with us.' Therefore 
does he answer clearly and unmistakably: 



A KELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 189 

"Abraham rejoiced that he should see my day. He saw it and 
was glad. 

"Art thou then older than Abraham? 

" Before Abraham was I am. 

"Who art thou, then? 

" I am the beginning, who also speak to you. 

"Whosoever seeth me seeth the Father; I and the Father are 
one. 

" No one comelh to the Father but by me." 

The appeal of Bishop Keane to Jesus Christ as 
the revealed God, in whom is the fulfillment of 
divine promise and the substance of things longed 
for by the sages of the Gentiles, was fitly followed 
by the address of the Rev. J. K. Smyth, of the New 
Jerusalem church in Boston Highlands, on "The 
Incarnation of God in Christ," from which we may 
quote at length: 

"Christianity, in its broadest as well as its 
deepest sense, means the presence of God in human- 
ity. It is the revelation of God in his world; the 
opening up of a straight, sure way to that God; 
and a new tidal How of divine life to all the sons of 
men. The hope of this has, in some measure, been 
in every age and in every religion, stirring them 
with expectation. Evil might be strong; but a day 
would come when the seed of a woman would 
bruise the serpent's head, even though it should 
bruise the conqueror's heel. God in his world to 
champion and redeem it ! This is what the relig- 
ions of the ages have, in some form and with 
various degrees of certainty, looked for. This is 
what sang itself into the songs and prophecies of 
Israel. ' And the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed: 



190 world's religious congresses. 

and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of 
Jehovah hath spoken it. 

"'Behold, the Lord Jehovah will come in 
strength, and his arm shall rale for him. Behold 
his reward is with him and his work before him. 
He shall feed his flock like a shepherd. He shall 
gather the lambs with his arms, and carry them in 
his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are 
with young.' 

" Christianity is in the world to utter her belief 
that he who revealed himself as the Good Shepherd 
realizes these expectations and fulfills these prom- 
ises, and that in the Word made flesh the glory of 
Jehovah has been revealed and all flesh may see it 
together. Even in childhood he bears the name 
Immanuel, which, being interpreted, is 'God with 
us.' He explains his work and his presence by 
declaring that it is the coming of the kingdom 
— not of law, nor of earthly government, nor 
of ecclesiasticism, but of God. His purpose, 
to manifest and bring forth the love and the wis- 
dom of God; his miracles, simply the attesta- 
tions of the divine immanence; his supreme end, 
the culmination of all his labors; his sufferings, 
his victories, to become the open and glorified me- 
dium of divine life to the world. It is not another 
Moses, nor another Elias, but God in the world — 
God with us — this, the supreme announcement of 
Christianity, asserting his immanence, revealing 
God and man as intended for each other, and rous- 
ing in man slumbering wants and capacities to real- 
ize the new vision of manhood that dawns upon him 
from this luminous Figure. 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 191 

"Christianity affirms as a fundamental fact of 
the God it worships that he is a God who does not 
hide or withhold himself, but who is ever going 
forth to man in the effort to reveal himself, and to 
be known and felt according to the degree of man's 
capacity and need. This self- manifestation or 
'forthgoing of all that is known or knowable of 
the divine perfections' is the Logos, or Word; and 
it is the very center of Christian revelation. This 
Word is God, not withdrawn in dreary solitude, but 
coming into intelligible r.nd personal manifestation. 
From the beginnings — for so we may now read the 
' Golden Proem ' of St. John's Gospel, with its won- 
derful spiritual history of the Logos — from the 
beginning God has this desire to go forth to some- 
thing outside of himself and be known by it. ' In 
the beginning was the Word.' Hence the creation. 
' All things were made by him.' Hence, too, out of 
this divine desire to reveal and accommodate him- 
self to man, his presence in various forms of relig- 
ion. 'He was in the world.' Even in man's sin 
and spiritual blindness the eternal Logos seeks to 
bring itself to his consciousness. 

" ( The light shineth in the darkness.' But 
gradually through the ages, through man's sinful- 
ness, his spiritual perceptions become dim and he 
sees as in a state of open-eyed blindness only the 
forms through which the divine mind has sought to 
manifest himself. ' He was in the world and the 
world knew him not.' What more can be done? 
Type, symbol, religious ceremonials, scriptures — all 
have been employed Has not man slipped beyond 



192 world's religious congresses. 

the reach of the divine endeavors? But the Christian 
history of the Logos moves on to its supreme an- 
nouncement: ; And the Word was made flesh and 
dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory 
as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace 
and truth.' Not some angel come from heaven to 
deliver some further message; not another prophet 
sprung from our bewildered race to chide, to warn, 
or to exhort; but the Logos, which in the beginning 
was with God and which was God; the Jehovah of 
the old prophecies, whose glory, it had been prom- 
ised, would be revealed that all flesh might see it 
together. And so in the Christian view of it the 
history of the Logos completes itself in the story of 
the manger. And so, too, the incarnation, instead of 
being exceptional, is exactly in line with what the 
Logos has from the beginning been doing. God, 
as the Word, has ever been coming to man in a 
form accommodated to his need, keeping step with 
his steps until, in the completeness of this desire to 
bring himself to man where he is, he appears to 
the natural senses and in a form suitabje to our 
natural life. 

" In the Christian conception of God, as one who 
seeks to reveal himself to man, it simply is inevit- 
able that the Word should manifest himself on the 
very lowest plane of man's life if at any time it 
would be true to say of the spiritual condition: 
; This people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears 
are dull of hearing and their eyes they have closed.' 
It is not extraordinary in the sense of its being a 
hard or an unnatural thing for God to do. He has 




11 



SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, 

Hindu Monk, India. 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 193 

always been approaching man, always adapting his 
revelations to human conditions and needs. It is 
this constant accommodation and manifestation 
that has kept man's power of spiritual thought 
alive. The history of religions, together with their 
remains, is a proof of it. The testimony of the his- 
toric faiths presented in this parliament has con- 
firmed it as the most self-evident thing of the divine 
nature in his dealings with the children of men, 
and the incarnation as its natural and completest 
outcome. 

"And when we begin to follow the life of him 
whose footprints, in the light of Christian history 
and experience, are still looked upon as the very 
footprints of the Incarnate Word, the gospel story 
is a story of toil, of suffering, of storm, and tem- 
pest; a story of sacrifice, of love so pure and holy 
that even now it has the power to touch, to thrill, 
to re-create man's selfish nature. There is an un- 
doubted actuality in the human side of this life, but 
just as surely there is a certain divine something 
forever speaking through those human tones and 
reaching out through those kindly hands. The 
character of the Logos is never lost, sacrificed, or 
lowered. It is always this divine something trying 
to manifest itself, trying to make itself understood, 
trying to redeem man from his slavery to evil and 
draw to itself his spiritual attachment. 

' ' Here, plain to human sight, is part of that age- 
long effort of the Word to reveal itself to man only 
now through a nature formed and born for the pur- 
pose. We are reminded of it when we hear him 

13 



194 world's religious congresses. 

say: 'Before Abraham was, I am.' We are 
assured of it when he declares that he came forth 
from the Father. And we know that he has tri- 
umphed when, at the last, we hear his promise, 
'Lo, I am with you always.' It is the Logos 
speaking. The divine purpose has been fulfilled. 
The Word has come forth on this plane of human 
life, manifested himself and established a relation- 
ship with man nearer and dearer than ever before. 
He has made himself available and indispensable 
to every need or effort. 'Without me ye can do 
nothing.' In his divine humanity he has estab- 
lished a perfect medium whereby we may have free 
and immediate access to God's fatherly help. 'I 
am the Door of the sheep.' 'lam the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life.' In this thought of the divine 
character of the Son of Man the early Christians 
found strength and comfort. For a time they did 
not attempt to define this faith theologically. It 
was a simple, direct, earnest faith in the goodness 
and redeeming power of the God-man, whose perfect 
nature had inspired them to believe in the reality of 
his heavenly reign. They felt that the risen Lord 
was near them; that he w r as the Saviour so long 
promised; the world's, hope, 'in whom dwelleth all 
the fullness of the Godhead bodily.' But to- 
day man claims his right to enter understandingly 
into the mysteries of faith, and reason asks, How 
could God or the divine Logos be made flesh? 

"Yet, in seeking for an answer to such an in- 
quiry, we are at the same time seeking to know of 
the origin of human life. The conception and birth 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 195 

of Jesus Christ, as related in the gospels, is, de- 
clares the reason, a strange fact. So, too, is the 
conception and birth of every human being. Neither 
can be explained by any principle of naturalism, 
which regards the external as first and the internal 
as second and of comparative unimportance. 
Neither can be understood unless it be recognized 
that spiritual forces and substances are related to 
natural forces and substances as cause and effect; 
and that they, the former, are prior and the active, 
formative agents playing upon, and received by, the 
latter. We do not articulate words and then try to 
pack them with ideas and intentions. The process 
is the reverse. First the intention, then that inten- 
tion coming forth as a thought, and then the 
thought incarnating itself by means of articulated 
sounds or written characters. 

"By this same law man is primarily, essentially, 
a spiritual being. In the very form of his creation 
that which essentially is the man, and which in 
time loves, thinks, makes plans and efforts for use- 
ful life, is spiritual. In his conception, then, the 
human seed must not only be acted upon but be 
derived from invisible, spiritual substances which 
are clothed with natural substances for the sake 
of a conveyance. That which is slowly developed 
into a human being or soul must be a living organ- 
ism composed of spiritual substances. Gradually 
that primitive form becomes enveloped and pro- 
tected within successive clothings, while the mother, 
from the substances of the natural world, silently 
weaves the swathings and coverings which are to 



196 world's religious congresses. 

serve as a natural or physical body and make possi- 
ble its entrance into this outer court of life. 

" We do not concede, then, that there is anything 
impossible or contrary to order in the declaration of 
the gospel, but ' that which is conceived in her is 
of the Holy Spirit.' It is still in line with the gen- 
eral law of the conception and birth of all human 
beings. The primitive form or nature, as in the case 
of man, is spiritual. But in this instance it is not de- 
rived from a human father, but is especially formed 
or molded by the divine creative spirit ; formed as with 
us, of spiritual substances; formed with a perfection 
and with infinite possibilities of development un- 
known to us; formed, too, for the special purpose of 
being the perfect instrument or medium upon and 
through which the divine might act as its very soul. 
Because that primitive form is divinely molded or 
begotten instead of being derived from a finite pater- 
nity, it is unique. It is divine in first principles. 
In the outer clothings of the natural mind and in 
the successive wrappings furnished by the woman 
nature it shares our weakness. But primarily, 
essentially, it is born with the capacity of becoming 
divine through the removal of whatever is imperfect 
or limiting, and through complete union with the 
divine which formed it for himself. 

"Very like our humanity in all that pertains to 
the growth of the natural body and natural mind 
would be this humanity of the Son of Man. The 
same tenderness and helplessness of its infantile 
body; the same possibility of weariness, hunger, 
thirst, pain; the same exposure, too, in the lower 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 197 

planes of the mind, to the assaults of evil resulting in 
internal struggle, temptation, and anguish of spirit. 
And yet there is always an unlikeness, a difference, in 
that the very primitive, determining forms and possi- 
bilities of that humanity are divinely begotten. And 
so we think of this humanity of Jesus Christ as so 
formed and born as to be able to serve as a perfect 
instrument whereby the eternal Logos might come 
and dwell among us; might so express and pour 
forth his love; might so accommodate and reveal his 
truth; might, in a word, so set himself on all the 
planes of angelic and human existence as to be for- 
ever after immediately present in them, and so 
become literally, actually God-with-us. 

"Gradually this was done. Gradually the divine 
life of love and wisdom came into the several planes 
which, by incarnation, existed in this humanity, 
removing from them whatever was limiting or 
imperfect, substituting what was divine, filling 
them, glorifying them, and in the end making them 
a very part of himself. 

"This brings into harmony the two elements 
which we are apt to look upon and keep distinct, 
the human and the divine. For he himself tells us 
of a process, a distinct change which his humanity 
underwent, and which is the key to his real nature. 
'The Holy Spirit,' says the record, 'was not yet 
given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.' 
Some divine operation was going on within that 
humanity which was not fully accomplished. But 
on the eve of his crucifixion he exclaimed: 'Now 
is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in 



198 world's religious congresses. 

him.' It is this process of putting off what was 
finite and infirm in the human, and the substitution 
of the divine from within, resulting in the formation 
of a divine humanity. So long as that is going on 
the human as the Son feels a separation from the 
divine as the Father, and speaks of it and turns to 
it as though it were another person. But when the 
glorification is accomplished, when the divine has 
entirely filled the human and they act ' reciprocally 
and unanimously as soul and body,' then the decla- 
ration is: 'I and the Father are one.' Divine in 
origin, human in birth, divinely human through 
glorification. As to his soul, or inmost being, the 
Father; as to his human, the Son; as to the life and 
saving power that go forth from his glorified nature, 
the Holy Spirit. 

"This story of the divine life in its descent to 
man, this coming or incarnation of the Logos through 
the humanity of Jesus Christ, it is the sweet and 
serious privilege of Christianity to carry into the 
world. I try to state it; I try from a new theolog- 
ical standpoint to show reasons for its rational 
acceptance. But I know that however true and 
necessary explanations may be, the fact itself tran- 
scends them all. No one in this free assembly is 
required or expected to hide his denominationalism. 
And yet I love to stand with my fellow Christians 
and unite with them in that simplest, most compre- 
hensive creed that was ever uttered, Credo Domino. 
Denominationalism, dogmatism, aside! Aside, too, 
all prejudices and practices. What is the simplest, 
the fundamental idea of the being of Jesus Christ ? 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 199 

Brother men, are we not ready to unite in saying it 
is, and saying it to the whole round world: that the 
Lord Jesus Christ is the life or the love of God, 
manifesting itself to man, going out into the world, 
awakening the capacity which is in every man for 
spiritual, yes, for divine life % Is not that the very 
heart of the gospel, or rather is not that the gospel? 
And is it not equally true that up to this hour there 
is no fact so real, no fact so powerful, no fact that is 
working such spiritual wonders as the fact, the 
influence, the being of Jesus Christ? 

"We are sitting here as the first great parliament 
of the religions of the world. We rightly believe, 
we boldly say, that from this time on the father- 
hood of God and the brotherhood of man must 
mean more to us than ever before, and none can be 
so timid but would dare to stand here and say that 
in this hall the death-knell of bigotry has sounded. 
Yet it were a sacrilege to sapp>ose that the large tol- 
erance which has been shown here, and which has 
secured for the representatives of every faith such a 
hospitable reception, is the evolution of mere good 
nature. It is the Spirit of him whose utterance of 
those simple words, which have been inscribed as 
the text of the Columbian Liberty Bell, are already 
ringing in 'the Christ that is to be' — 'A new com- 
mandment I give unto you, That ye love one 
another. 7 " 

SIN AND RECONCILIATION. 

If we turn now to the subject of Sin and Reconcilia- 
tion, it is of interest to note the following testimony 



200 world's religious congresses. 

from the Rev. T. E. Slater of Bangalore, India. 
Having pointed out that the speculative problem 
before the Hindu philosopher and the struggle of 
the religious man have been how to break the dream, 
get rid of the impostures of sense and time, emanci- 
pate self from the bondage of a fleeting world, and 
attain the one reality, the divine, he shows that 
idolatry itself, degrading as it is, is an effort to 
realize to the senses what otherwise is only an idea. 

' ' Idolatry ' ' he says, ' ' is a strong human protest 
against pantheism, which denies the personality of 
God, and atheism, which denies God altogether; it 
testifies to the natural craving of the heart to have 
before it some manifestation of the unseen — to 
behold a humanized God. It is not, at bottom, an 
effort to get away from God, but to bring God near. 

"Once more. The idea of the need of sacrificial 
acts, ' the first and primary rites ' — eucharistic, 
sacramental, and projjitiary — bearing the closest 
parallelism to the provisions of the Mosaic economy, 
and prompted by a sense of personal un worthiness, 
guilt, and misery — that life is to be forfeited to 
the Divine Proprietor — is ingrained in the whole 
system of Vedic Hinduism. A sense of original 
corruption has been felt by all classes of Hindus, 
as indicated in the prayer: ' I am sinful, I commit 
sin, my nature is sinful. Save me, thou lotus-eyed 
Hari, the remover of sin.' 

4 'No literature," he continues, "not even the 
Jewish, contains so many words relating to sacrifice 
as Sanskrit. The land has been saturated with 
blood. The secret of this great importance attached 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 201 

to sacrifice is to be found in the remarkable fact 
that the authorship of the institution is attributed to 
'Creation's Lord' himself and its date is reckoned 
as coeval with the creation. The idea exists in the 
three chief Vedas, and in the Brahmanas and Upani- 
shads that Prajapati, ' the lord and supporter of his 
creatures' — the Purusha (primeval male) — begot- 
ten before the world, becoming half immortal and 
half mortal in a body fit for sacrifice, offered himself 
for the devas (emancipated mortals) and for the 
benefit of the world; thereby making all subsequent 
sacrifice a reflection or figure of himself. The ideal 
of the Vedic Prajapati, mortal and yet divine, him- 
self both priest and victim, who by death overcame 
death, has long since been lost in India. Among 
the many gods of the Hindu pantheon none has ever 
come forward to claim the vacant throne once rever- 
enced by Indian rishis. No other than the Jesus of 
the Gospels — 'the Lamb slain from the foundation 
of the world ' — has ever appeared to fulfill this 
primitive idea of redemption by the efficacy of sac- 
rifice; and when this Christian truth is preached it 
ought not to sound strange to Indian ears. An emi- 
nent Hindu preacher has said that no one can be a 
true Hindu without being a true Christian. But 
one of the saddest and most disastrous facts of the 
India of to-day is that modern Brahmanism, like 
modern Parseeism, is fast losing its old ideas, relax- 
ing its hold on the more spiritual portions, the dis- 
tinctive tenets of the ancient faith. Happily, how- 
ever, a reaction has set in, mainly through the exer- 
tions of these scholars, and the more thoughtful 



202 world's religious congresses. 

minds are earnestly seeking to recover from their 
sacred books some of the buried treasures of the 
past." 

The reference here to Parseeism recalls what J. J. 
Modi says in his paper on the religion of Zoroaster 
about the Par see doctrine of purification. Man to 
be perfect before God must shun evil, and work 
righteousness; and the sacred fire is the symbol of 
the purifying temptation by which he is perfected. 

"Now what does a fire so prepared signify to a 
Parsee? He thinks to himself: ' When this fire on 
this vase before me, though pure in itself, though 
the noblest of the creations of God, and though the 
best symbol of the divinity, had to undergo certain 
processes of purification, had to draw out, as it 
were, its essence — nay, its quintessence — of purity 
to enable itself to be worthy of occupying this ex- 
alted position; how much more necessary, more 
essential, and more important it is for me — a 
a poor mortal who is liable to commit sins and 
crimes, and who comes into contact with hundreds 
of evils, both physical and mental — to undergo the 
process of purity and piety by making my thoughts, 
words, and actions pass, as it were, through a sieve 
of piety and purity, virtue and morality, and to 
separate by that means my good thoughts, good 
words, and good actions from bad thoughts, bad 
words, and bad actions, so that I may in my turn be 
enabled to acquire an exalted position in the next 
world.' Again, the fires put together as above are 
collected from the houses of men of different grades 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 203 

in society. This reminds a Parsee that, as all these 
fires from the houses of men of different grades have 
all, by the process of purification, equally acquired 
the exalted place in the vase, so before God all men 

— no matter to what grades of society they belong 

— are equal, provided they pass through the process 
of purification, i. e., provided they preserve purity 
of thoughts, purity of words, and purity of deeds. 

"Again, when a Parsee goes before the sacred lire, 
which is kept all day and night burning in the tire 
temple, the officiating priest presents before him 
the ashes of a part of the consumed fire. The Par- 
see applies it to his forehead just as a Christian 
applies the consecrated water in his church, and 
thinks to himself: 'Dust to dust. The fire, all 
brilliant, shining, and resplendent, has spread the 
fragrance of the sweet-smelling sandal and frankin- 
cense round about, but is at last reduced to dust. 
So it is destined for me. After all I am to be 
reduced to dust and have to depart from this tran- 
sient life. Let me do my best to spread, like this 
fire, before my death, the fragrance of charity and 
good deeds and lead the light of righteousness and 
knowledge before others.' In short, the sacred fire 
burning in a fire temple serves as a perpetual moni- 
tor to a Parsee standing before it to preserve piety, 
purity, humility, and brotherhood." 

And in evidence that there is no thought of a sub- 
stitutional righteousness in connection with the sym- 
bol, but a real and living righteousness to be 
adopted and established in the worshiper, he says: 



204 world's religious congresses. 

' ' All Parsee prayers begin with an assurance to do 
acts that would please the Almighty God. The 
assurance is followed by an expression of regret for 
past evil thoughts, words, or deeds, if any. Man is 
liable to err, and so, if during the interval any 
errors of commission or omission are comitted, a 
Parsee in the beginning of his prayers repents for 
those errors. He says: 

" 'O Omniscient Lord! I repent of all my sins. I 
repent of all evil thoughts that I might have enter- 
tained in my mind, of all the evil words that I have 
spoken, of all the evil actions that I might have 
committed. O Omniscient Lord! I repent of all 
the faults that might have originated with me, 
whether they refer to thoughts, words, or deeds, 
whether they appertain to my body or soul, whether 
they be in connection with the material world or 
spiritual.' " 

This does not greatly differ in its ideal from what 
is known among us as liberal Christianity, which 
holds that moral conduct when performed by 
man in acknowledgment of God, and in harmony 
with his divine and all-pervading life, has a spirit- 
ual value. Thus Prof. C. H. Toy of Harvard Uni- 
versity, in a paper on "Religion and Conduct," 
says: 

"In the sphere of religion the two sorts of sanc- 
tion are what we call natural and supernatural. 
The laws of nature may be considered to be laws 
of God, and the natural penalties and rewards of 
life to be divine sanctions. Obedience to these laws 



A KELIGIOTJS SYMPOSIUM. 205 

is a moral act, because it involves control of self 
in the interest of organic development; but super- 
natural sanctions are inorganic and non-moral, since 
they do not appeal to a rational self-control. He 
who is honest merely to escape punishment or 
receive reward fixed by external law is not honest at 
all; but he who observes the laws of health or of 
honesty because he perceives that they are necessary 
to the well-being of the world is also religious if he 
recognizes these laws as the ordination of God. 

' ' When religious sanctions are spoken of it is 
commonly the supernatural sort that is meant. It 
is an interesting question how far the belief in these 
is now morally effective. That it has at various 
times been influential can not be doubted. In the 
ancient world and in medieval Europe the deity was 
believed to intervene supernaturally in this life for 
the protection of innocence and the punishment of 
wickedness; but this belief appears to be vanishing 
and can not be called an effective moral force at the 
present day. Men think of reward and punishment 
as belonging to the future, and this conception is 
probably of some weight; yet its practical impor- 
tance is much diminished by the distance and the 
dimness of the day of reckoning. The average man 
has too little imagination to realize the remote fut- 
ure. At the critical moment it is usually passion or 
the present advantage that controls action. 

" It is also true that the supernatural side of the 
belief in future retribution is passing away; it is 
becoming more and more the conviction of the 
religious world that the future life must be mor- 



206 world's religious congresses. 

ally the continuation and consequence of the pres- 
ent. This must be esteemed a great gain — it tends 
to banish the mechanical and emphasize the ethical 
element in life and to raise religion to the plane of 
rationality. Rational religious morality is obedi- 
ence to the laws of nature as laws of God. 

' ' We are thus led to the other side of religion, 
communion with Grod as the effective source of 
religious influence on conduct. It is this, in the 
first place, that gives eternal validity to the laws of 
right. Resting on conscience and the constitution of 
society, these laws may be in themselves obligatory 
on the world of men, but they acquire a universal 
character only when we remember that human 
nature itself is an effluence of the divine, and that 
human experience is the divine self-revelation. 

"Further, the consciousness of the divine presence 
should be the most potent factor in man's moral 
life. The thought of the ultimate basis of life, 
incomprehensible in his essence yet known through 
his self-outputting in the world as the ideal of 
right, as a comrade of man in moral life, should be, 
if received into the soul as a living every-day fact, 
such a purifying and uplifting influence as no merely 
human relationship has ever engendered. 

" The true power of religion," he concludes, "lies 
in the contact between the divine soul and the soul 
of man. It must be admitted that to attain this is 
no easy thing. To feel the reality of a divine per- 
sonality in the universe, to value this personality as 
the ideal of justice and love, to keep the image of it 
fresh and living in the mind day by day in the 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. . 207 

midst of the throng of petty and serious cares of 
life, demands an imaginative power and a force of 
will rarely found among men. It is in this power 
that the great creative religious minds have excelled. 
The mass of religious people are controlled by lower 
considerations, and never reach the plane of pure 
religious feeling. Most men look to God as their 
helper in physical things, or as an outside law-giver, 
rather than as their comrade in moral struggle. 
Thus religion has not come to its rights in the 
world; it still occupies, as a rule, the low plane of 
early non-moral thought; but is there any reason 
why it should continue in this inferior plane? Is 
there anything to prevent our living in moral con- 
tact with the soul of the world, and thence deriving 
the inspiration and strength we need ? What has 
been done by some may be done in a measure by all. 
Inadequate conceptions of God and of the moral 
life must be swept away, the free activity of the 
human soul must be recognized and relied on, the 
habit of contemplation of the ideal must be culti- 
vated; we must feel ourselves to be literally and 
truly co-workers with God. In the presence of such 
a communion would not moral evil be powerless 
over man ? Finally, we here have a conception of 
religion in which almost all, perhaps all, the systems 
of the world may agree. It is our hope of unity." 

Still, on the other hand, it is contended that all 
the systems of the world show man's need of a 
divine reconciliation. The old doctrine of a substi- 
tutional sacrifice and vicarious atonement was set 



208 world's religious congresses. 

forth by Rev. Dr. Kennedy, in a paper on "The 
Redemption of Sinful Man through Jesus Christ," 
with great frankness. Of the fall, and its effects, 
he says: "Adam of his own free will upset the first 
order of God's providence, and he now came nnder 
another order; he had been innocent and just, 
he was now a guilty and fallen man; he could not 
enter into heaven, and he was doomed to suffer the 
other miseries brought on by his own sin until God 
saw fit to send him a Redeemer. He no doubt 
soon repented of his sin; and if he returned to God 
with a sincerely contrite heart the guilt would be 
remitted and he would not be punished eternally 
for it. But he was powerless to repair the injury 
done, because the gifts and graces he had lost were 
gratuitous favors, not due to his nature, but granted 
through pure love and goodness by God; hence 
their restoration was subject to his good pleasure. 

"Unfortunately for us this fall of the father of the 
human race affected his posterity. The perfections 
of original justice would have passed to his descend- 
ants had he remained faithful, but he failed to com- 
ply with the conditions on which they had been 
granted, and, having lost them himself, he could 
not transmit them to his children. In consequence 
of his sin we too w r ere deprived of the supernatural 
perfections that he possessed. Though not guilty 
of any actual personal sins, the children of Adam 
are, as St. Paul says (Eph. ii, 3), 'by nature 
children of wrath ' ; they are displeasing in the sight 
of God, because he does not see in their souls the 
graces, virtues, and perfections he had intended for 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 209 

all, and of which they were deprived through the 
fault of Adam by an act in which he was morally 
the representative of the human race. This is 
what is meant by original sin; at least this is the 
explanation of its essence given by the majority of 
theologians; and if any one tries to see in original 
sin as taught by the church a personal act by which 
men offend God, he will not succeed, because it is 
not a personal sin ; it is the habitual state displeas- 
ing to God in which the souls of men are left since 
the father of the human race offended God by an 
act of proud disobedience. 

"With the supernatural grace the preternatural 
gifts were also lost. We became subject to death, 
not only as to a law of nature but also as a penalty, 
for 'by one man sin entered into this world, and by 
sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in 
whom all have sinned.' (Rom. v, 12.) We also 
experience the stings of conscience, the war of the 
flesh against the spirit, which would, in the benevo- 
lent designs of providence, have been prevented by 
the subjection of the mind to grace. Our nature, 
also, was wounded, like the nature of Adam, with 
the three wounds of ignorance, weakness, and pas- 
sion. Then began the rule of him who had the 
empire of death, that is to say, the devil (Heb. ii, 
14), which was to last until Christ came to destroy 
that empire by his death. St. Augustine, in one 
of his sermons, calls this unhappy condition a sick- 
ness of human nature that had spread over the face 
of the earth, 'Magnus per orbem jacebat wgrotusS 
And in another place he says that in consequence of 

14 



210 world's religious congresses. 

sin, the nature of man, which should have been a 
beautiful olive tree planted and watered and nur- 
tured by the hand of God, and bearing fruits for 
eternity, became a miserable oleaster, contemptible 
and disagreeable by the ugliness of its appearance 
and the bitterness of its false fruits. The work 
of the gardener had been interfered with and man 
was condemned to taste the bitter fruits of his own 
planting. He was displeasing to God and he needed 
some one who could reconcile him with the heavenly 
Father by atoning for his sins; he had lost the grace 
of God, and of himself could not recover it; he was 
a slave under the power of Satan, and stood in need 
of a redeemer." 

Expounding the plan of redemption, he continues: 
' ' In the first place, it must be borne in mind that 
God could, if he willed, have chosen another method 
of redemption. Being Lord of all things, he might 
have condoned Adam' s offense and restored to man 
his lost prerogatives without demanding any atone- 
ment. He might, if he willed, have accepted in 
satisfaction for sin the salutary penances of Adam 
or of some of his descendants. But, says St. Atha- 
nasius, in this we must consider not what God could 
have done, but what was best for man, for that was 
chosen. Away then with all thoughts of excessive 
rigor on the part of God. He willed to redeem and 
save us through the sufferings and merits of Christ, 
because it was better for us; and at the same time 
he gave to the world the greatest manifestation ever 
known of his own goodness, power, wisdom, and 



A EELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 211 

justice, as we are told by St. John Damascene 
and St. Thomas Aquinas — two princes of the- 
ology. This plan of redemption was freely and lov- 
ingly accepted by the second person of the trinity, 
and the Son came into the world in the form of man 
that he might be our Saviour; and as a Saviour he 
manifested himself from the first moment of his 
incarnation until the day of his ascension; a Saviour 
he is still, for as St. Paul tells us (Rom. viii, 34), 
sitting now at the right hand of God he continually 
intercedes for us, offering to the Father in our 
behalf his superabundant merits. He was a Saviour 
by his teaching, by his example, and by his death. 
The prophet Isaiah had foretold, 800 years before 
his birth: ' Behold, I have given him for a witness 
before the people, for a leader and for a master to 
the Gentiles' (Iv, 4); and when he came, after he 
had been baptized by St. John, the Father's voice 
from the clouds announced that he was the divinely 
appointed teacher of mankind: ' This is my beloved 
Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him ' (Matt. 
xvii, 5), and St. Peter afterward proposed that 
his Master's doctrine was heavenly and salutary: 
' Thou, O Lord, hath the words of eternal life ' (John 
vi, 69)." 

Then, of the efficacy of Christ's death, he says: 
" Then it was that our Saviour consented to be a 
voluntary victim oifered up in expiation for the sins 
of the world. ' The Word was made flesh and dwelt 
amongst us' (John i, 14); Christ came into the 
world, true God and true man. Being man, he could 



212 WORLD'S RELIGIOUS CONGRESSES. 

suffer; being God, anyone of his actions would have 
infinite value both for merit and for atonement. 
■ God laid on him the iniquity of us all,' says Isaiah 
(liii, 6); by his death God's justice was satisfied 
and man was redeemed; for, says St. Peter (I Ep. 
i, 18), we were ' not redeemed with corruptible things, 
as gold and silver, but with the precious blood of 
Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and un defiled.' Thus 
was blotted out the handwriting of the decree that 
was against us (Col. ii, 14). By his death Christ 
not only freed us from evil, he also merited for us 
the graces we need in order that we may do good, 
performing actions meritorious of eternal life. 
Without Christ we can do nothing (John xv, 5). 
All those who were saved under the old law were 
saved through faith in the Redeemer to come; grace 
was granted to them owing to his foreseen merits. 
In the new law all our sufficiency is from him (II 
Cor. ii, 3); all graces are granted, as we ask them, 
' through the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ.' He merited these graces for us by all the 
acts of his life, but principally by dying for us; the 
precious blood shed on Calvary flows through the 
church; it vivifies the sacraments, the channels of 
grace, by par taking of which we drink from that 
'fountain of water springing into life everlasting' 
(Johniv, 14)." 

Equally orthodox, but carrying the discussion into 
the realm of the effect in man of the acceptance of 
Christ's sacrifice, was the address of Walter Elliott, 
of the Paulist Convent, New York, from which we 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 213 

cite the following as showing the orthodox ideal of 
the atonement, arbitrary though the means may 
seem, is with some, at least, conceived as a real and 
living union of the soul with God: 

u 'The justification of a wicked man is his trans- 
lation from the state in which man is born as a 
son of the first Adam into the state of grace and 
adoption of the sons of God by the second Adam, 
Jesus Christ, our Saviour.' These words of the 
Council of Trent affirm that the boon of God's favor 
is not merely restoration to humanity's natural 
innocence. God's friendship for man is elevation 
to a state higher than nature's highest, and infinitely 
so, and yet a dignity toward which all men are 
drawn by the unseen attraction of divine grace and 
toward which in their better moments they con- 
sciously strive, however feebly and blindly. Re- 
ligion, as understood by Christianity, means new 
life for man, different life, additional life. The 
Christian mind is thus to be discovered and tested 
by comparison with the highest standard: ' Be ye 
perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.' 

" Before coming to the ways and means and proc- 
esses of acquiring this divine life we must consider 
atonement for sin. It may be asked, Why does 
Christ elevate us to union with his Father through 
suffering % The answer is that God is dealing with 
a race which has degraded itself with rebellion and 
with crime, which naturally involves suffering. 
God's purpose is now just what it was in the begin- 
ning, to communicate himself to each human being, 
and to do it personally, elevating men to brother- 



214 world's religious congresses. 

hood with his own divine Son, making them par- 
takers of the same grace which dwells in the soul of 
Christ, and sharers hereafter in the same blessed- 
ness which he possesses with the Father. To accom- 
plish this purpose God originally constituted man 
in a supernatural condition of divine favor. That 
lost by sin, God, by an act of grace yet more signal, 
places his Son in the circumstances of humiliation 
and suffering due to sin. This is the order of atone- 
ment, a word which has come to signify a mediation 
through suffering, although the etymological mean- 
ing of it is bringing together into one. Mediation 
is now, as ever before, the constant and final pur- 
pose of God's loving dealing with us. 

" Religion is positive. It makes me good with 
Christ's goodness. Religion does essentially more 
than rid me of evil. In the mansions of the Father, 
sorrow opens the outer door of the atrium in which 
I am pardoned, and love leads to the throne room. 
If forgiveness and union be distinct, it is only as 
we think of them, for to God they are one. And this 
is to be noted: all infants who pass into heaven 
through the laver of regeneration have had no con- 
scious experience of any kind, and yet will enjoy 
the union of filiation forever. Nor can it be denied 
that there are multitudes of adults whose sanctifica- 
tion has had no conscious process of the remission 
of grave sin, for many such have never been guilty 
of it. To excite them to a fictitious sense of sinfulness 
is untruthful, unjust, and unchristian. Hounding 
innocent souls into the company of demons is false 
zeal and is cruel. The expiation of sin is the 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 215 

removal of an obstacle to our union with God. 
Nothing hinders the progress of guileless or repent- 
ant souls, even their peace of mind, more than prev- 
alent misconceptions on this point. Freed from 
sin many fall under the delusion that all is. done; 
not to commit sin is assumed to be the end of 
religion. In reality pardon is but the initial work 
of grace, and even pardon is not possible without 
the gift of love. The sufferings of Christ as well as 
whatever is of a penitential influence in his religion 
are not in the nature of merely paying a penalty, but 
is chiefly an offering of love. Atonement is related 
to mediation as its condition and not as its essence. 
We are washed in the Redeemer's blood, but that 
blood does not remain on the surface; it penetrates 
us and sanctifies our own blood, mingling with it. 
We are not ransomed only, but ennobled. The 
process on man's part of union with God is free and 
loving acceptance of all his invitations, inner and 
outer, natural and revealed, organic and personal. 
Loving God is the practical element in our recep- 
tion of the Holy Spirit. The fruition of love is 
union with the beloved. If to be regenerated means 
to be born of -God, then what is to be sought after is 
newness of life by the immediate contact with life's 
source and center in love. The perfection of any 
finite being is the closest possible identity with its 
ideal. The supreme end and office of religion is to 
cause men by love personally to approximate to the 
ideal, not merely of humanity, but of humanity 
made one with the Deity." 



216 world's religious congresses. 

The objection to this idea of the divine govern- 
ment and plan of atonement has always been its 
ideal of God. It presupposes that he needs to be 
reconciled and appeased and his government vindi- 
cated; whereas the apostle declares, "God was in 
Christ reconciling the world unto himself." The 
problem with most minds is, How did God in 
Christ redeem mankind from the great weight and 
bondage of evil, and how does he carry over to 
man the power of his life and work so as to be in 
man a real and vital reconciliation and union with 
God? 

On this point the paper of the Rev. Theodore F. 
Wright, Ph. D., of Cambridge will be read with 
interest, and by many with satisfaction, as present- 
ing a view of the subject distinctive from the 
orthodox and from the moral influence theory of 
atonement, and one which makes the statement of 
his subject significant. His subject was "Recon- 
ciliation Yital, not Vicarious." 

"There are certain dicta of Scripture," he said, 
"which are universal because fundamental and 
fundamental because universal. One of these is 
that saying of the Apostle John, ' God is love; 
and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and 
God in him.' Once of sympathies so narrow that 
he Avas for bringing fire from heaven down upon a 
village which would not receive his Lord as he 
journeyed, *he was now so tenderly conscious of the 
infinite love which had sought him out and 
gathered him that he could say: 'He that loveth 
not knoweth not God, for God is love; beloved, if 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 217 

God so love us, we also ought to love one another.' 
John had attained to this conviction by the process 
of religious experience. Others have seen the same 
infinite fact written in vernal fields and ripening 
harvests. Others find it in the intricate harmony 
of natural forces. They all see that there is as the 
center and source of life a fountain of fatherliness 
which is ever begetting and nurturing, so that, 
indeed, we can not conceive of the idle God, the 
neglectful God, or the God of limited interests. 
Our minds will not work until we place before them 
the ever-creating God, who neither slumbers nor 
sleeps; the ever present help. ' Peradventure he 
sleepeth ' might be said of Baal, for there was no 
answer; but when Elijah called on the God of 
Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, 'the fire of the 
Lord fell.' It is in the light of this fact of the 
universal divine love that the fallen condition of 
man finds its remedy disclosed. There may have 
been a time when this light was so dim that 
Judaism fancied its God a partisan, and a regressive 
Christianity thought that it had ascertained the 
limits of the divine care, but now we know that 
God is one, and that ' his tender mercies are over 
all his work.' This being so, it is true to say that 
fallen man was succored by the same love that 
created him. The father of the prodigal does not 
sulk in his tent while some elder brother is left to 
search out the wanderer and bring him in, pointing 
to the wounds he got in rescuing him as a means of 
softening the heart of the father; nay, the father 
watches the pathway with longings, and sends his 



218 world's religious congresses. 

love after the boy, and when the wayward one is 
yet a great way off, he sees, he hath compassion, he 
runs, he falls on his neck, he kisses him ; he bids 
them bring the robe, the ring, the shoes, the fatted 
calf; he reproves the cold vindictiveness of the elder 
brother; he is all shepherd-like. 

" We need not dogmatize as to the fallen state of 
man. Intellectually man has not fallen. He is as 
bright as he ever was. He is growing brighter. 
The evolution of the intellect is indisputable. But 
as to the will, what is man? Is he the worshij)ing 
child that he once was? Does he eagerly do the 
truth he learns or does he find it necessary to com- 
pel himself to do it ? There is a degree of igno- 
rance, of illiteracy, but it is easy to find a remedy 
for it in the common school. There is on every side 
a spectacle of lust, and greed, and indolence, and 
selfishness, and our schools touch it not. We are 
making men shrewd, but we are not making them 
good. The human mind wants reaching in its 
depths. The motives behind our thinking want 
renewal, else mind-life is like John Randolph's 
mackerel in the moonlight, which stank as it shone. 
So was man in the sad days of Roman sensuality 
and Jewish hypocrisy, and so do our daily chroni- 
cles testify to-day. The cure for the lost sheep is 
to seek for it till it is found. 'All we like sheep 
have gone astray; we have turned every one to his 
own way.' (Is. liii, 6.) The question is, How 
should the divine love accomplish the purpose with 
which it must be teeming — the' recovery of the lost 
state? Our answer is in general to say that the 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 219 

remedy was within the keeping of the infinite love 
and wisdom which had so far made and conducted 
man, or we must hold some view which limits the 
Holy One of Israel. If God would come with any 
mercy he must descend to the place of the fallen. 
If he would conquer the evil without destroying 
them, he must contend with them on their own 
plane. To take upon himself the nature born of 
woman would be his means of redemption. He 
must take on the office of Joshua, who led the 
people out of the wilderness into their inheritance. 
And a virgin conceived and bore a son, and called 
his name Jesus — that is, Joshua. The Wisdom or 
Word of God was made flesh, so that we behold the 
glory of the Father. It was the Father in the Son 
who did the works. How marvelously clear are 
the prophetic songs of Mary and Zacharias. She 
said: 'My spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Saviour. 
He hath showed strength with his arm. He hath 
holpen his servant, Israel, in remembrance of his 
mercy, as he spake to our fathers.' And the father 
of the forerunner said: 'Blessed be the Lord God of 
Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people ; 
that we, being delivered out of the hands of our 
enemies, might serve him without fear all the days 
of our life; the day-spring from on high hath visited 
us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and the 
shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of 
peace.' Therefore John the Baptist proclaimed him 
as ' the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the 
world,' and therefore he bade his hearers prepare 
the way of Jehovah, and make straight his path. 



220 

' ' Born of woman, and so open to every tempta- 
tion, he was early led to find the written word, his 
light of life. He went about his father's business 
by expounding it. Tried in the wilderness, he made 
no other answer than the law. Going about doing 
good, he healed the sick and gave sight to the blind, 
and brought good tidings to the meek. At Jerusa- 
lem he cleansed the temple of its corruption, even as 
he was daily rendering his own nature the temple of 
God. The inevitable conflict was not shunned. The 
perceived unfaithfulness of many did not provoke a 
word of resentment. The attempts of habitual sin- 
ners of this world and the other to overthrow him 
failed again and again, but it was inevitable that 
there must be a last and most direful assault. He 
foresaw it ; but behold the conduct of infinite love ! 
He bathed his disciples' feet in order to teach them 
the new commandment of love to one another. He 
bade them be not troubled, and spoke of the peace 
he had to give to them. He chastened himself in 
the garden. On his way to the cross he asked the in 
to weep rather for themselves than for him. He 
gave the mother a son to care for her old age. To 
perjured Peter his answer had been but a look. To 
the false accusations he had been dumb. For his 
love they were his adversaries, but he gave himself 
unto prayer. Rising again, he came with indescrib- 
able gentleness to the recognition of Mary Magda- 
lene. To the two discouraged disciples he was all 
patience. To doubting Thomas he was infinitely 
condescending. As he stood there, for the time 
made visible to their spiritual sight, having entered 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 221 

where the doors were shut, he was the embodi- 
ment of prophecy fulfilled, of divine love triumph- 
ant. He was, he is, ' Our Lord and our God,' 'the 
brightness of his glory, the express image of his 
person.' 

' ' This is no merely vicarious act of a subordinate 
or additional person of God. It was the act of God 
himself to restore the vital union between man and 
himself, that union which man had severed by 
increasing self-assertion, waywardness, and wicked- 
ness, and which could only be renewed by contri- 
tion and return and reconciliation. In the case of 
the man healed of his blindness, in the ninth chapter 
of John, we have first the evil condition, then the 
remedy offered, next the remedy accepted, at once 
the cure effected, and finally a vital union of safety 
for him established with the Lord, as shown by his 
saying, 'Lord, I believe,' and by his worshiping 
him. In more difficult cases, as we know by some 
experience, the knowledge of the remedy may be 
cold and unfruitful in the memory until in seeking 
to lead a less selfish life, to be worthy of a loving 
wife or a trusting child, or to consecrate our lives in 
full- to the Lord's service, we begin to form new 
motives with the divine aid; to hate what we once 
wickedly loved, and to love what we once wickedly 
hated; and so, little by little, born from above, a 
new heart is formed within us, and we come to act as 
faithful rather than as unfaithful servants of the 
Lord, as friends rather than as enemies. So do 
we cease to do evil and learn to do well, if we 
wilL Thus we may see that the will and the power 



222 world's religious congresses. 

to rescue and to reconcile wayward souls sprang 
from the infinite love; that the method is that of 
the divine order, and that the result in the individ- 
ual redeemed through repentance and regeneration 
is just what man's fallen state required and requires. 
It is precisely as Paul said: 'God was in Christ 
reconciling of the world unto himself.' (II Cor. v, 
19.) And again he said: ' In him dwelleth all the 
fullness of the Godhead bodily.' (Col. xi, 9.) ' We 
dwell in him,' said John once more, ' and he in us; 
we loved him because he first loved us.' 'This is 
the true God and eternal life. ' 

" ' That uncreated beauty, which has gained 
My raptured heart, has all my glory stained; 
His loveliness my soul has prepossessed, 
And left no room for any other guest.' " 

REVELATION AND THE SCRIPTURES. 

If we turn to the subject of revelation we find 
abundant testimony to the universality of belief in 
revelation of some sort from God to man. An 
interesting descriptive and illustrative paper on 
"The Sacred Books of the World as Literature" 
was furnished by Prof. Milton S. Terry, D. D., who 
said in appeal for a larger study of all sacred litera- 
tures: "I am a Christian, and must needs look at 
things from a Christian point of view; but that 
fact should not hinder the broadest observation. 
Christian scholars have for centuries admired the 
poems of Homer, and will never lose interest in the 
story of Odysseus, the myriad-minded Greek, who 
traversed the roaring seas, touched many a foreign 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 223 

shore, and observed the habitations and customs of 
many men. Will they be likely to discard the 
recently deciphered Accadian hymns and Assyrian 
penitential psalms ? Is it probable that men who 
can devote studious years to the philosophy of Plato 
and Aristotle will care nothing about the invoca- 
tions of the old Persian Avesta, the Vedic hymns, 
the doctrines of Buddha, and the maxims of Confu- 
cius? Nay, I repeat it, I am a Christian; therefore 
I think there is nothing human or divine in any lit- 
erature of the world that I can afford to ignore." 

Beginning with a quotation from the Chinese on 
creation and setting in comparison with citations 
from the Vedas, and referring to the Scandinavian 
Edda, and the Chaldean account of creation, he 
says: "As theologians we naturally study these 
theosophic poems with reference to their origin and 
relationship. But we now call attention to the 
place they hold in the sacred literatures of the 
world. Each composition bears the marks of an 
individual genius. He may, and probably does, in 
every case express the current belief or tradition of 
his nation, but his description reveals a human mind 
wrestling with the mysterious problems of the 
world, and suggesting, if not announcing, some 
solution. As specimens of literature the various 
poems of creation exhibit a world-wide taste and 
tendency to cast in poetic form the profoundest 
thoughts which busy the human soul." 

Speaking of the scriptures of Buddhism he gives 
some interesting facts: "The sacred scriptures of 
Buddhism comprise three immense collections 



224 world's religious congresses. 

known as the Tripitaka, or 'three baskets.' One 'of 
these contains the discourses of Buddha, another 
treats of doctrines and metaphysics, and another is 
devoted to ethics and discipline. In bulk these 
writings rival all that was ever included under the 
title of Yeda, and contain more than seven times the 
amount of matter in the Scriptures of the Old and 
New Testaments. The greater portion of this exten- 
sive literature, in the most ancient texts, exists as 
yet only in manuscript. But as Buddhism spread 
and triumphed mightily in Southern and Eastern 
Asia, its sacred books have been translated into Pali, 
Burmese, Siamese, Tibetan, Chinese, and other Asi 
atic tongues. The Tibetan edition of the Tripitaka 
fills about 325 folio volumes. Every important tribe 
or nation which has adopted Buddhism appears to 
have a more or less complete Buddhist literature of 
its own. But all this literature, so vast that one life- 
time seems insufficient to explore it thoroughly, 
revolves about a comparatively few and simple doc- 
trines. First we have the four sublime Verities: (1) 
All existence, being subject to change and decay, is 
evil. (2) The source of all this evil is desire. (3) 
Desire and the evil which follows it maybe made to 
cease. (4) There is a fixed and certain way by 
which to attain exemption from all evil. Next 
after these Verities are the doctrines of the Eightfold 
Path: (1) Right belief, (2) right judgment, (3) right 
utterance, (4) right motives, (5) right occupation, 
(6) right obedience, (7) right memory, and (8) right 
meditation. Then we have further, Hve command- 
ments: (1) Do not kill; (2) do not steal; (3) do not 




% : 




MISS JEANNE SORABJI, 
Christian Convert, Bombay, India. 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 225 

lie; (4) do not become intoxicated; (5) do not commit 
adultery." 

Advancing to the sacred literature of China, he 
speaks as follows of the ' ; books of Confucianism, 
which is par excellence the religion of the Chinese 
Empire. Bat Confucius was not the founder of the 
religion which is associated with his name. He 
claimed merely to have studied deeply into antiquity 
and to be a teacher of the records and worship of 
the past. The Chinese classics comprise the five 
King and the four Shu. The latter, however, are 
the works of Confucius' disciples, and hold not the 
rank and authority of the five King. The word 
King means a web of cloth (or the warp which keeps 
the thread in place), and is applied to the most 
ancient books of the nation, as works possessed of a 
sort of a canonical authority. Of these ancient 
books the Shu King and the Shih King are of chief 
importance. One is a book of history and the other 
of poetry. The Shu King relates to a period extend- 
ing over seventeen centuries, from about 2357 B. C. 
to 627 B. C, and is believed to be the oldest of all 
the Chinese Bible, and consists of ballads relating to 
events of the national history and songs and hymns 
to be sung on great state occasions. They exhibit a 
primitive simplicity and serve to picture forth the 
manners of the ancient time." 

"In passing now from sacred literatures of the 
far East to those of the West I linger for a moment 
over the religious writings of the ancient Babyloni- 
ans and the Persians. Who has not heard of Zoro- 
aster and the Zend-Avesta? But the monuments of 

15 



226 world's religious congresses. 

the great valley of the Tigris and Euphrates have 
in recent years disclosed a still more ancient litera- 
ture. The old Accadian and Assyrian hymns might 
be collected into a volume which would perhaps rival 
the Veda in interest if not in value." 

' 'As for the sacred scriptures of the Parsees, the 
A vesta, it may be said that few remains of antiquity 
are of much greater interest to the student of his- 
tory and religion. But these records of the old 
Iranian faith have suffered sadly by time and the 
revolutions of the empire. One who had made 
them a special life study observes: 'As the Parsees 
are the ruins of a people, so are their sacred books 
the ruin of a religion. There has been no other 
great belief that ever left such' poor and meager 
monuments of its past si3lendor.' The oldest por- 
tions of the Avesta consist of praises to the holy 
powers of heaven and invocations for them to be 
present at the ceremonial worship. The entire col- 
lection taken together is mainly of the nature of a 
prayer-book or ritual." 

As for these and other sacred scriptures, the 
people among whom they are received regard them 
as in some way the revelation of the divine wisdom 
for man. What recognition have Christians to give 
to them, how do they explain their origin, and value 
them in comparison with our own sacred Scriptures? 
On this point Professor Carpenter of Oxford, in his 
plea for "a wider conception of revelation," says: 
"The early Christians were confronted with the fact 
that Greek poets and philosophers had reached 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 227 

truths about the being of God not at all unlike those 
of Moses and the prophets. Their solution was 
worthy of the freedom and universality of the spirit 
of Jesus. They were for recognizing and welcoming 
truth wherever they found it, and they referred it 
without hesitation to the ultimate source of wisdom 
and knowledge, the Logos, at once the inner 
thought and the uttered word of God. The martyr 
Justin affirmed that the Logos had worked through 
Socrates, as it had been present in Jesus; nay, with 
a wider outlook he spoke of the seed of 'the Logos 
implanted in every race of man. In virtue of this 
fellowship, therefore, all truth was revelation and 
akin to Christ himself. ' Whatsoever things were 
said among all men are the property of us Chris- 
tians.' The Alexandrian teachers shared the same 
conception. The divine intelligence pervaded 
human life and history and showed itself in all that 
was best in beauty, goodness, truth. The way of 
truth was like a mighty river, ever flowing, and as it 
passed it was ever receiving fresh streams on this 
side and that. Nay, so clear in Clement's view was 
the work of Greek philosophy that he not only 
regarded it like law and gospel as a gift of God, it 
was an actual covenant as much as that of Sinai, 
possessed of its own justifying power, or following 
the great generalization of St. Paul, the law was a 
tutor to bring the Jews to Christ. Clement added 
that philosophy wrought the same heaven-appointed 
service for the Greeks. May we not use the same 
great conception over other fields of the history of 
religion? 4 In all ages,' affirmed the author of the 



228 

wisdom of Solomon, 'wisdom entering into holy 
souls maketli them friends of God and prophets.' 
So we may claim in its widest application the say- 
ing of Mohammed: ' Every nation has a creator of 
the heavens, to which they turn in prayer; it is 
God who turneth them toward it. Hasten, then, 
emulously after good wheresoever ye be. God will 
one day bring you all together.' " 

It is interesting in this connection to recall the 
theory of Maurice Phillips of Madras, quoted 
above, that the Vedic Hinduism was derived from 
primitive revelation, and to raise the question 
whether all tSiese sacred Scriptures are not the 
more or less perverted streams of such primitive 
revelation. They all show an antecedent 'history, 
which is not the history of savage man. They not 
only show interior relation and striking family 
resemblance, but they issue at full head out of the 
gateway of an unapproachable past. They are 
colored by the washing of the channels through 
which they run; but what is essential to each is 
common to all, and testifies to a divine fountain of 
the water of life. They use the same symbols and 
imagery, and suggest a mystical meaning. "The 
idea of a divine revelation," says the author of the 
paper on "Concessions to Native Ideas," " the idea 
of a ' w^ord of God ' communicated directly to inspired 
sages or rishis, according to a theory of inspiration 
higher than that of any other religion in the world, 
is perfectly familiar to Hindus, and is, indeed, uni- 
versally entertained. Yet the conclusion reached is 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 229 

this, that a careful comparison of religions brings 
out this striking contrast between the Bible and all 
other scriptures; it establishes its satisfying char- 
acter in distinction from the seeking spirit of other 
faiths. The Bible shows God in quest of man rather 
than man in quest of God. It meets the questions 
raised in the philosophies of the East, and supplies 
their only true solution." 

Is this because the Bible contains a verbal revela- 
tion, given as at the first by inspiration, and main- 
tained in purity by divine providence, while all 
other scriptures are derived from traditions of a 
primitive word of God? In confirmation of this 
faith, it may be recalled that Rawlinson says, " The 
facts appear on the whole to point to the existence 
of a primitive religion communicated to man from 
without, and the gradual clouding over of this 
primitive revelation everywhere, unless it were 
among the Hebrews." 

The origin of religion in revelation will be 
admitted by those who incline to the theory of 
natural development as well as those who think of 
it as the voice of God from above; but what is the 
idea of revelation? It would appear from the deliv- 
erances before the congress that there are essen- 
tially two, and only two, ideas of revelation in the 
world to-day. One almost universally accepted in 
some form or other is that it is the voice of God in 
human consciousness. The other, accepted prob- 
ably by a very few, that it is the involution of the 
divine in human speech, through human instru- 
ments, but by a divine act; and that it is through 



230 world's religious congresses. 

the inspiration in men of such verbal communica- 
tion from God that spiritual and divine ideas can 
be communicated to man's conscious recognition. 

The first theory, the revelation of the divine in 
consciousness, appears in declarations from the Ori- 
ent and from Christendom. Mr. Mozoomdar, in his 
eloquent address on "The World's Debt to Asia," 
voiced this thought of revelation in his poetic way: 
"In the high realms of that undying wisdom the 
Hebrew, the Hindu, the Mongolian, the Christian 
are ever at one, for that wisdom is no part of them- 
selves, but the self-revelation of God. The Hindu 
books have not plagiarized the Bible, Christianity 
has not plundered Buddhism, but universal wis- 
dom is like unto itself everywhere. Similarly love, 
when it is unselfish and incarnal, has its counterpart 
in all lands and all times. The deepest poetry, 
whether in Dante, Shakespeare, or Kalidasa, is uni- 
versal. The love of God repeats itself century after 
century in the pious of every race; the love of man 
makes all mankind its kindred. True holiness is 
the universal idea, however much personal prej- 
udices or rjassions stand in the way of the light. 
Hence Asia, seeking the universal God in her soul, 
has discovered God to all the world. This process of 
seeking and finding God within is an intense spirit- 
ual culture, known by various names in various 
countries; in India we call it Yoga. The self -con- 
centrated devotee finds an immersion in the depths 
of the indwelling deity. God's reason becomes 
man's reason, God's love becomes man's love. God 
and man become one. Introspection finds the uni- 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 231 

versal soul — the over-soul of your Emerson — beat- 
ing in all humanity, and a human and divine are thus 
reconciled." 

This doctrine in its more definite statement by 
western thinkers, is substantially this: That God is 
immanent in nature and man, and by his operation in 
the human soul draws man to seek him, and enables 
man to find him, and more or less truly to record what 
he has found. All sacred Scriptures are such record. 
Scripture and interpretation alike are the voice of 
God in the unfolding consciousness of man. It is 
this which gives coordinate authority for Doctor 
Briggs to Scripture and reason and the church. 
Scripture is the record of what God has taught in 
gifted souls; reason separates the essential from the 
non-essential and corrects the record in fuller light; 
the church perserves the record and keeps pure the 
witness to essential truths by a consensus of the voice 
of the divine Spirit in many through long time; each 
is serviceable to correct the other, and God works 
through all for the perfecting of each. The same 
theory lies at the root of the doctrine of the Cath- 
olic church concerning the Bible, only in its claim 
the superior authority is with the church, which 
by its Catholic decision establishes the written 
word, and by its Catholic consensus interprets it. 
It is probable, also, that the same theory underlies 
Joseph Cook's emphatic and characteristic declara- 
tion that "the worth of the Bible results from the 
fact that it contains a revelation of religious truth 
not elsewhere communicated to man." For he says 



232 world's religious congresses. 

this is true ' ' irrespective of any question as to the 
method of inspiration," and rests its religious infal- 
libility upon ' ' the literal infallibility of the strictly 
self-evident truths of Scripture." Dr. Briggs can 
say as much, as follows: 

"We may now say confidently to all men: ' All 
the sacred books of the world are now accessible to 
you; study them, compare them, recognize all that 
is good and noble and true in them all and tabulate 
results, and you will be convinced that the holy 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are true, 
holy, and divine.' When we have gone searchingly 
through all the books of other religions we will find 
that they are as torches of various sizes and brilliance 
lighting up the darkness of the night, but the holy 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are like 
the sun shining in the heavens and lighting up the 
whole world." 

But the sacred Scriptures are not the word of 
God, they are records of the Word as it was revealed 
in hoty men, and the records are not without error, 
nor have they any magical or peculiar divine power 
which makes them authoritative over reason which 
is God's voice now in men. Thus he says of the 
writers: 

"They were guided by the divine Spirit in their 
comprehension and expression of the divine instruc- 
tion, but, judging also from their work, it seems 
most probable that they were not guided by the 
divine Spirit in grammar, rhetoric, logic, expression, 
arrangement of material, or general editorial work. 



A EELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 233 

They were left to those errors which even the most 
faithful and scrupulous of writers will sometimes 
make. The science which approaches the Bible 
from without and the science which studies it from 
within agree as to the essential facts of the case. 
Now, can the truthfulness of Scripture be main- 
tained by those who recognize these errors? There 
is no reason why the substantial truthfulness of the 
Bible shall not be consistent with circumstantial 
errors. God did not speak himself in the Bible 
except a few words recorded here and there; he 
spoke in much greater portions of the Old Testa- 
ment through the voices and pens of the human 
authors of the Scriptures. Did the human minds 
and pens always deliver the inerrant word % 

' 'All that we can claim is inspiration and accuracy 
for that which suggests the religious lessons to be 
imparted. Gfod is true. He is the truth. He can 
not lie; he can not mislead or deceive his creatures. 
But the question arises, when the infinite God 
speaks to finite man must he speak words which are 
not error? This depends not only upon God's 
speaking, but on man's hearing, and also of the 
means of communication between God and man. It 
is necessary to show the capacity of man to receive 
the word before we can be sure that he transmitted 
it correctly. The inspiration of the holy Scriptures 
does not carry with it inerrancy in every particular; 
it was sufficient if the divine truth was given with 
such clearness as to guide men aright in religious 
life. 

"The errors of holy Scripture are not errors of 



234 WOULD 5 S RELIGIOUS CONGRESSES. 

falsehood or deceit, but of ignorance, inadvertence, 
partial and inadequate knowledge, and of incapacity 
to express the whole truth of God which belonged to 
man as man. Just as light is seen not in its pure 
and unclouded state, but in the beautiful colors of 
the spectrum, so it is that the truth of God, its reve- 
lation and communication to man, met with such 
obstacles in human nature. Men are capable of 
receiving it only in its diverse operations, and 
diverse manners as it comes to them through the 
diverse temperaments and points of view of the 
Biblical writers. The religion of the Old Testament 
is a religion which includes some things hard to 
reconcile in an inerrant revelation. The sacrifice of 
Jephthah's daughter, the divine command to Abra- 
ham to offer up his son as a burnt offering, and other 
incidents seem unsuited to divine revelation. The 
New Testament taught that sacrifices must be of 
broken, contrite hearts and humble and cheerful 
spirits. What pleasure would God take in smoking 
altars? How could the true God prescribe such 
puerilities?" 

With more confidence, because established in the 
supreme authority of the church, through which, 
acting in its Catholic capacity as an organized body, 
it is claimed, the divine Spirit reveals itself infalli- 
bly, the Rt.-Eev. Mgr. Seton declared the Catholic 
doctrine of the Bible: 

"The-church is a living society commissioned by 
Jesus Christ to preserve the Word of God pure and 
unchanged. This revealed Word of God is contained 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 235 

partly in the holy Scripture and partly in tradition. 
The former is called the written Word of God, 
writing — not necessarily, indeed, on }Daper, but as 
often found on more durable materials, such as clay 
or brick tablets, stone slabs and cylinders, and metal 
plates — being the art of fixing thoughts in an intelli- 
gible and lasting shape, so as to hand them down to 
other generations and thus perpetuate historical 
records. There is a special congruity that the 
Almighty, from whose instructions, not only orig- 
inal spoken, but probably also written, language was 
derived, should have put his divine revelations in 
wiiting through the instrumentality of chosen men; 
and as the human race is originally one, we think 
that the fact that scriptures of some sort claiming 
to be inspired are found in all the civilized nations 
of the past shows that such conceptions, although 
outside of the orthodox line of tradition, are derived 
from the primitive unity and religion of the human 
family. The church teaches that the sacred Script- 
ures are the written Word of God and that he is 
their author, and consequently she receives them 
with piety and reverence. This gives a distinct 
character to the Bible which no other book possesses, 
for of no mere human composition, however excel- 
lent, can it ever be said that it comes directly from 
God. The church also maintains that it belongs 
to her, and to her alone, to determine the true 
sense of the Scriptures, and that they can not be 
rightly interpreted contrary to her decision; because 
she claims to be and is the living, unerring authority 
to whom, and not to those who expound the Script- 



236 world's religious congresses. 

ure by the light of private judgment, infallibility 
was promised and given." 

The second theory of revelation was set forth 
by the Rev. Frank Sewall, with an appeal to the 
testimony of the Scriptures themselves, so full and 
frank as to challenge that ' ' criticism ' ' of which Doc- 
tor Briggs thinks so highly that he says the faith 
which shrinks from it is a faith so weak and uncer- 
tain that it excites suspicion as to its life and vital- 
ity. When, in preparing for the parliament, it was 
observed that the programme provided for no pres- 
entation of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, 
I asked that the Rev. Mr. Sewall be assigned "The 
Character and Degree of the Inspiration of the 
Christian Scriptures." The paper, because it stands 
alone in the doctrine advocated both as to the canon 
and as to nature of inspiration, and presents its argu- 
ment from the Scriptures themselves, will interest 
even those committed to the prevailing theories. 

" There is a common consent among Christians 
that the Scriptures known as the Holy Bible are 
divinely inspired ; that they constitute a book unlike 
all other books in that they contain a direct com- 
munication from the divine Spirit to the mind and 
heart of man. The nature and the degree of the 
inspiration which thus characterizes the Bible can 
only be learned from the declaration of the holy 
Scriptures themselves, since only the divine can 
truly reveal the divine or afford to human minds 
the means of judging truly regarding what is divine. 

"The Christian Scripture, or the Holy Bible ; is 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 237 

written in two parts, the Old and the New Testa- 
ment. In the interval of time that transpired 
between the writing of these two parts, the divine 
truth and essential Word, which in the beginning 
was with God and was God, became incarnate on 
onr earth in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
He, as the Word made flesh and dwelling among 
men, being himself ' the true Light that lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world,' placed the 
seal of divine authority upon certain of the then 
existing sacred Scriptures. He thus forever fixed 
the divine canon of that portion of the written 
Word; and from that portion we are enabled to 
derive a criterion of judgment regarding the degree 
of divine inspiration and authority to be attributed 
to those other Scriptures which were to follow after 
our Lord's ascension and which constitute the JSTew 
Testament. 

"The divine canon of the Word in the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures is declared by our Lord in Luke, 
twenty-fourth chapter, forty-fourth verse, where he 
says: ' All things must be fulfilled which were 
written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and 
in the Psalms concerning me.' And in verses 
twenty-five to twenty- seven: ' O fools, and slow of 
heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken ' 
— ' and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he 
expounded unto them in all the Scriptures things 
concerning himself.' The Scriptures of the Old Tes- 
tament thus enumerated as testifying of him and 
as being fulfilled in him embrace two of the three 
divisions into which the Jews at that time divided 



238 world's religious congresses. 

their sacred books. These two are the Law (Torah), 
or the five books of Moses, so called, and the 
Prophets (Nebiim). Of the books contained in the 
third division of the Jewish canon, known as the 
Kethubim or 'other writings,' our Lord recognizes 
but two: he names by title 'the Psalms;' and in 
Matthew, twenty -fourth chapter, fifteenth verse, 
when predicting the consummation of the age and his 
own second coming, our Lord cites the prophecy of 
Daniel. It is evident that our Lord was not gov- 
erned by Jewish tradition in naming these three 
classes of the ancient books which were henceforth 
to be regarded as essentially ' the Word, ' because of 
having their fulfillment in himself. In the very 
words of Jesus Christ the canon of the Word is 
established in a twofold manner: First, intrinsic- 
ally, as including those books which interiorly tes- 
tify of him and were all to be fulfilled in him. 
Secondly, the canon is fixed specifically by our 
Lord's naming the books which compose it under 
the three divisions: ' The Law, the Prophets, and 
the Psalms.' The canon in this sense comprises 
consequently the ^.Ye books of Moses, or the ' Law,' 
so-called; the books of Joshua, the Judges, First 
and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, or 
the so-called earlier prophets; the later prophets, 
including the four ' great ' and the twelve ' minor ' 
prophets, and finally the Book of Psalms. The 
other books of the Old Testament, namely: Ezra, 
Nehemiah, Job, Proverbs, First and Second Chron- 
icles, Puth, Esther, the Songs of Solomon, and Eccle 
siastes, are as well as the so-called, ' Apocrypha.' 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 239 

Of those books, which compose the divine canon 
itself, it may be said that they constitute the inex- 
haustible source of revelation and inspiration. We 
may regard, therefore, as established that the source 
of the divinity of the Bible, of its unity, and its 
authority as divine revelation lies in having the 
Christ, as the eternal Word within it, at once its 
source, its inspiration, its prophecy, its fulfillment, 
its power to illuminate the minds of men with a 
knowledge of divine and spiritual things, to ' convert 
the soul,' to ' make wise the simple.' 

' ' We next observe regarding these divine books 
that, besides being thus set apart by Christ, they 
declare themselves to be the word of the Lord in 
the sense of being actually spoken by the Lord, and 
so as constituting a divine language. This shows 
that not only do these books claim to be of God's 
revealing, but that the manner of the revelation was 
that of direct dictation by means of a voice actually 
heard, as one hears another talking, although by 
the internal organs of hearing. The same is also 
true throughout the prophetical books above enu- 
merated. Here we are met with the constant decla- 
ration of the 'Word of the Lord coming,' as the 
' voice of the Lord speaking,' to the writers of these 
books, showing that the writers wrote not of them- 
selves, but from the 'voice of the Lord through 
them.' 

' ' We now turn to the New Testament, and apply- 
ing to those books which in the time of Christ were 
yet unwritten criteria derived from those books 
which had received from him the seal of divine 



240 woeld's eeligious congeesses. 

authority, namely, that they are words spoken by 
the Lord or given by his Spirit, and that they testify 
of him and so have in them eternal life, we find in 
the four Gospels either — 

"1. The words 'spoken unto' us by our Lord 
himself when among men as the Word, and of which 
he says: ' The words which I speak unto you they 
are spirit and they are life.' 2. The acts done by 
him or to him ' that the Scriptures might be ful- 
filled,' or finally the words 'called to the remem- 
brance ' of the apostles and the evangelists by the 
Holy Spirit according to his promise to them in 
John xiv, 26. Besides the four Gospels we have 
the testimony of John the Revelator that the visions 
recorded in the Apocalypse were vouchsafed to him 
by the Lord himself, thus showing that the Book 
of Revelation is no mere personal communication 
from the man John, but is the actual revelation of 
the Divine Spirit of Truth itself. 

"No such claims of direct divine inspiration or 
dictation are made in any other part of the New 
Testament. Only to the four Gospels and to the 
Book of Revelation could one presume to apply 
these words, written at the close of the Apocalypse 
and applying immediately to it: ' If any man shall 
take away from the words of the prophecy of this 
book, God shall take away his part out of the book 
of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things 
which are written in this book.' In the portion of 
the Bible which we may thus distinguish preemi- 
nently as the ' Word of the Lord ' it is therefore the 
words themselves that are inspired, and not the 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 241 

men that transmitted them. This is what our Lord 
declares. 

Moreover, the very words which the apostles 
and the evangelists themselves heard, and the acts 
which they beheld and recorded, had a meaning 
and content of which they were partially and in 
some cases totally ignorant. Thus when our Lord 
speaks of the ' eating of his flesh ' the disciples mur- 
mur, ' This is an hard saying; who can bear it? ' And 
when he speaks of ' going away to the Father and 
coming again,' the disciples say among themselves, 
' What is this that he saith? We can not tell what 
he saith.' If we look at the Apocalypse, with its 
strange visions, its mysterious numbers and signs; 
if we read the prophets of the Old Testament, with 
their commingling of times and nations, and lands 
and seas, and things animate and inanimate in a 
manner discordant with any conceivable earthly 
history or chronology; if we read the details of the 
ceremonial law dictated to Moses in the mount by 
the ' voice of Jehovah ' ; if we read in Genesis the 
account of creation and of the origins of human 
history — we are compelled to admit that the penmen 
recording these things were writing that of which 
they knew not the meaning; that what they wrote 
did not represent their intelligence or counsel, but 
was the faithful record of what was delivered to 
them by the voice of the Spirit speaking inwardly to 
them. Here, then, we see the manner of divine 
revelation in human language, again definitely 
declared and exemplified in Jesus the Word incar- 
nate, in that not only in his acts did he employ 

16 



242 world's religious congresses. 

signs and miracles, but in teaching his disciples lie 
' spake in parables,' and ' without a parable spake 
he not to them, that it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my 
mouth in parables; I will utter things which have 
been kept sacred from the foundation of the world.' 
We learn, therefore, that the divine language is 
that of parable, wherein things of the kingdom of 
heaven are clothed in the familiar figures of earthly 
speech and action. If the Bible is divine, the law of 
its revelation must be coincident with that of divine 
creation. Both are the involution of the divine and 
infinite in a series of veils or symbols, which become 
more and more gross as they recede from their 
source. In revelation the veiHngs of the divine 
truth of the essential Word follow in accordance 
with the receding and more and more sensualized 
states of mankind upon earth. Hence the successive 
dispensations, or church eras, which mark off the 
whole field of human history. After the Eden days 
of open vision, when ' heaven lay about us in our 
infancy,' followed the Noetic era of a sacred lan- 
guage, full of heavenly meanings, traces of which 
occur in the hieroglyphic writings and the great 
world-myths of most ancient tradition; then came 
the visible and localized Theocracy of a chosen 
nation, with laws and ritual, and a long history of 
its war and struggle, and victory and decline, and 
the promise of a final renewal and perpetuation; all 
being at the same time a revelation of God's provi- 
dence and government over man, and a picture of 
the process of the regeneration of the human soul 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 243 

and its preparation for an eternal inheritance in 
heaven. But even the law of God thus revealed in 
the form of a national constitution, hierarchy, and 
ritual was at length made of non-effect through the 
traditions of men, and men ' seeing saw not, and 
hearing heard not, neither did they understand.' 
Then for the redemption of man in this extremity 
' the Word itself wa s made flesh and dwelt among us,' 
and now, in the veil of a humanity subject to human 
temptation and suffering, even to the death upon 
the cross. 

"Thus the process of the evolution of the Spirit 
out of the veil or of the letter of the Scripture, begun 
in our Lord's own interpretation of the 'Law for 
those of ancient time,' is a process to whose 
further continuance the Lord himself testifies. 
The letter of Scripture is the cloud which every- 
where proclaims the presence of the infinite God 
with his creature man. The cloud of the Lord's 
presence is the infinitely merciful adaptation of 
divine truth to the spiritual needs of humanity. 
The cloud of the literal gospel and of the apostolic 
traditions of our Lord is truly typified by that 
cloud which received the ascending Christ out of 
the immediate sight of men. The same letter of the 
Word is the cloud in which he makes known his 
second coming in power and great glory, in reveal- 
ing to the church the inner and spiritual meanings 
of both the Old and New Testament of his Word. 
For ages the Christian church has stood gazing up 
into heaven in adoration of him whom the cloud 
has hidden from their sight, and with the tradi- 



244 world's religious congresses. 

tions of human dogma and the warring of schools 
and critics more and more dense has the cloud 
become. In the thickness of the cloud it behooves 
the church to hold the more fast its faith in the 
glory within the clond. 

"The view of the Bible and its inspiration thus 
presented is the only one compatible with a belief in 
it as a divine in contradistinction from a human pro- 
duction. Were the Bible a work of human art, 
embodying human genius and human wisdom, 
then the question of the writers' individuality and 
their personal inspiration, and even of the time and 
circumstances amid which they wrote, would be of 
the first importance. Not so if the divine inspira- 
tion and wisdom is treasured up in the very words 
themselves as divinely chosen symbols and par- 
ables of eternal truth. Far from placing a human 
limitation upon the divine Spirit, such a verbal 
inspiration as this opens in the Bible vistas of 
heavenly and divine meanings such as they could 
never possess were its inspirations confined to the 
degree of intelligence possessed by the human 
writers, even under a special illumination of their 
minds. The difference between inspired words of 
Grod and inspired men writing their own words is 
like that between an eternal fact of nature and the 
scientific theories which men have formulated upon 
or about it. The fact remains forever a source of 
new discovery and a means of ever new revelation 
of the divine; the scientific theories may come and 
go with the changing minds of men. 

" It is not, then, from man, from the intelligence 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 245 

of any Moses, or Daniel, or Isaiah, or John, that 
the Word of God contains its authority as divine. 
The authority must be in the words themselves. If 
they are unlike all other words ever written; if 
they have a meaning, yea, worlds and worlds of 
meaning, one within or above another, while human 
words have all their meaning on the surface; if they 
have a message whose truth is dependent upon no 
single time or circumstance, but speaks to man at 
all times and under all circumstances; if they have 
a validity and an authority self-dictated to human 
souls which survives the passing of earthly monu- 
ments and powers, which speaks in all languages, 
to all minds, wise to the learned, simple to the 
simple ; if, in a word, these are words that 
experience shows no man could have written from 
the intelligence belonging to his time, or from the 
exjDerience of any single human soul, then may we 
feel sure that we have in the words of our Bible that 
which is diviner than any penman that wrote them. 
Here is that which ' speaks with authority and not 
as the scribes.' The words that God speaks to 
man are 'spirit and are life.' The authorship of 
the Bible, and all that this implies of divine author- 
ity to the conscience of man, is contained, like the 
flame of the Urim and Thummim on the breast- 
plate of the high priest, in the bosom of its own 
language, to reveal itself by the Spirit to all who 
will ' have an ear to hear. ' So shall it continue to 
utter the 'dark parables of old which we have 
known and our fathers have told us,' and 'to 
show forth to all generations the praises of the 



246 world's religious congresses. 

Lord,' becoming ever more and more translucent 
with the glory that shines within the cloud of the 
letter; and so shall the church rest, amid all the 
contentions that engage those who study the sur- 
face of revelation, whether in nature or in Scripture, 
in the undisturbed assurance that the ' Word of the 
Lord abideth forever.' " 

IMMORTALITY. 

The doctrine of personal immortality received 
general acknowledgment and confirmation, as based 
on considerations of man's place in nature, the 
incompleteness of the present life, and the universal 
aspiration and intuition of the soul. Even the 
argument of scientific evolutionists led them to the 
inference of immortality. Professor Bruce of Glas- 
gow closed the paper on "Man's Place in Nature," 
contributed by him, as follows: 

' ' Does the view of man as the crown of the evolu- 
tionary process throw any light on his eternal des- 
tiny % Does it contain any promise of immortality % 
Here one feels inclined to speak with bated breath. 
A hope so august, so inconceivably great, makes 
the grasping hand of faith tremble. We are 
tempted to exclaim, behold, we know not anything. 
Yet it is worthy of note that leading advocates 
of evolutionism are among the most pronounced 
upholders of immortality. Mr. Fisk says: 'For 
my own part I believe in the immortality of the 
soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demon- 
strable proofs of a science, but as a supreme act of 
faith in the reasonableness of Grod's work.' He 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 247 

can not believe that Grod made the world, and 
especially its highest creature, simply to destroy it, 
like a child who builds houses out of rocks just for 
the pleasure of knocking them down. Not less 
strongly Le Conte writes: ' Without spirit-immor- 
tality this beautiful cosmos, which has been devel- 
oping into increasing beauty for so many millions 
of years, when its evolution has run its course and 
all is over, would be precisely as if it had never 
been — an idle dream, an idle tale, signifying 
nothing. ' These utterances of course do not settle 
the question; bat, considering whence they ema- 
nate, they may be taken at least as an authoritative 
indication that the tenet of human immortality is 
congruous to, if it be not a necessary deduction 
from, the demonstrable truth that man is the con- 
summation of the great world-process by which the 
universe has been brought into being." 

This of course teaches nothing that man wants to 
know. It simply asserts what all men refuse to 
disbelieve. What most men would like to know, 
is something about the mode of man's immortality. 
Even the Buddhist acknowledges so much as is 
asserted by Professor Bruce, and he carries on the 
evolutionary process, through the working of cause 
and effect in character, by means of repeated incar- 
nations, until the process reaches perfection, when 
he loses sight of it in the divine, and can affirm 
nothing more of the soul' s state and mode of being. 
His whole doctrine of transmigration is a doctrine 
of evolution, elaborated in the effort to solve the 



248 world's religious congresses. 

apparent inequality of opportunity, and manifest 
incompleteness of every mortal life. Back of it lies 
a tradition, which his doctrine seeks to interpret; 
but what he would ask of Christianity is some 
better explanation of the soul's longings and the 
necessity of self-conquest, and the obvious incom- 
pleteness of most lives, consistent with a benevolent 
conception of the divine order of the universe. One 
wonders that th's is all that Buddhism has to say; 
that it makes no claim to Gautama's seership and 
introduction into an inner and higher world at the 
time of his illumination, which others have claimed 
for him. But its representatives before the parlia- 
ment showed no such thought, nor any idea of 
Nirvana which could be described as a state of rest in 
conscious love and thought and activity in harmony 
with "the spirits of just men made perfect," in a 
spiritual world, in conscious reciprocal union with 
Grod. Nor can it be said that Christians were for- 
ward with assured and helpful explanations, with 
two exceptions to be noted presently. 

The paper on " The Religious System of the Par- 
sees" showed that " Zoroastrianism teaches the 
immortality of the soul," and that the Parsees 
" believe in heaven and hell " Heaven is called by 
a word which literally means "the best life." 
Heaven is represented as a place of radiance, splen- 
dor, and glory, and hell as that of gloom, darkness, 
and stench. And the state of the soul and trend 
of life determines man's place in the hereafter. 

"According to the Parsee Scriptures, for three 
days after a man' s death his soul remains within 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 249 

the limits of the world under the guidance of the 
angel Serosh. If the deceased be a pious man or a 
man who led a virtuous life, his soul utters the 
words signifying, ' Well is he by whom that which 
is his benefit becomes the benefit of any one else. ' 
If he be a wicked man or one who led an evil life, 
his soul utters the plaintive words which signify, 
< To which land shall I turn \ Whither shall I go V 

' ' On the dawn of the third night the departed 
souls appear at the 'Chinvat Bridge.' This bridge 
is guarded by the angel Meher the judge. He pre- 
sides there as a judge, assisted by the angels Rashne 
and Astad, the former representing justice and the 
latter truth. At this bridge, and before this angel 
Meher, the soul of every man has to give an account 
of its doings in the past life. The judge weighs a 
man's actions by a scale-pan. If a man's good 
actions outweigh his evil ones, even by a small 
particle, he is allowed to pass from the bridge to the 
otber end, to heaven. If his evil actions outweigh 
his good ones, even by a small weight, he is not 
allowed to pass over the bridge, but is hurled down 
into the deep abyss of hell. If his meritorious and 
evil deeds counterbalance each other, he is sent to 
a place corresponding to the Christian ' purgatory ' 
and the Mohammedan 'aeraf.' His meritorious 
deeds done in the past life would prevent him from 
going to hell, and his evil actions would not let him 
go to heaven. 

" Again Zoroastrian books say that the merito- 
riousness of good deeds and the sin of evil ones 
increase with the growth of time. As capital 



250 

increases with interest, so good and bad actions 
done by a man in his life increase, as it were, with 
interest in their effects. Thus a meritorious deed 
done in young age is more effective than that very 
deed done in advanced age. A man must begin 
practicing virtue from his very young age. As in 
the case of good deeds and their meritoriousness 
so in the case of evil actions and their sins. The 
burden of the sin of an evil action increases, as it 
were, with interest. A young man has a long time 
to repent of his evil deeds and to do good deeds 
that could counteract the effect of his evil deeds. If 
he does not take advantage of these opportunities 
the burden of those evil deeds increases with time." 

The expositions of Mohammedanism had little to 
say of the soul's future life; and Christian references 
to the subject were confined to the usual general 
assumption of continued existence in a state of hap- 
jjiness and peace in union with God, or of unhappi- 
ness in separation from God and the good. One 
noble paper 011 " The Argument for Immortality," 
and one on " The Soul and Its Future Life," con- 
stitute the only exceptions to these general references 
to the subject; and these, taken together, were so 
excellent as to make one almost glad that they 
stand alone. 

Doctor Moxom's treatment of "The Argument 
for Immortality" was eloquent and exhaustive, as 
showing the rational necessity for the conception of 
continued personal existence under spiritual con- 
ditions. As to the nature of evidence, he said: 



A KELIGIOTTS SYMPOSIUM. 251 

' ' None o»f the highest, the essentially spiritual facts 
of man's knowledge and experience fall within the 
scope of what is known as scientific proof. God, 
the soul, truth, love, righteousness, repentance, 
faith, beauty, the good — all these are unapproach- 
able by scientific tests; yet these, and not salts and 
acids, and laws of cohesion, and chemical affinity, and 
gravitation, are the supreme realities of man's life, 
even in this world of matter and force. When one 
demands scientific pro<*f of immortality, then, it is as 
if he demanded the linear measurement of a rjrinci- 
ple, or the troy weight of an emotion, or the color 
of an affection, or as if he should insist upon find- 
ing the human soul with his scalpel or microscope." 
He made a strong plea for the doctrine of con- 
tinuity of existence, and for the personal conscious- 
ness and individuality which it implies; referred 
with feeling to the Saviour's comforting promise, 
" I go to prepare a place for you," which «he said 
infects one's heart with happy -confidence; and 
ended with the statement that hope grows into an 
assurance of immortality, and serene faith deepens 
into a conscious experience as the soul knows God 
and strives toward the ideals of culture and charac- 
ter whicli rise in divine beckonings before us. If it 
could have been followed by a paper on the evi- 
dence from the sacred Scriptures showing that to 
opened vision of prophets and seers the spiritual 
world was displayed, and the demands of reason 
and the expectation of hope justified in fact, the 
showing would have been a complete and fitting 
preparation for the paper which followed, and con- 



252 world's religious congresses. 

stituted the only attempt to set forth the mode 
of man's immortality. 

This paper, by the Rev. Samuel M. Warren of 
Roxbury, on "The Soul and Its Future Life," 
assuming immortality, considered in what form and 
body and under what conditions man lives again. 
Starting with the propositions "That the soul is 
substantial, though not of earthly substance, and is 
the very man, and that the body is merely the 
earthly form and instrument of the soul, and that 
every part of the body is produced from the soul 
according to its likeness, in order that it may per- 
form its functions in the world during the brief but 
important time that this is the place of man's con- 
scious abode," the argument proceeds as follows: 

u If, as all Christians believe, man is an immortal 
being, created to live on through the endless ages 
of eternity, then the longest life in this world is, 
comparatively, but as a point, nn infinitesimal part 
of his existence.. In this view, it is not rational to 
believe that that part of man which is for his brief 
use in this world only, and is left behind when he 
passes out of this world, is the most real and sub- 
stantial part of him; every rational mind perceives 
that it can not be so. That is more substantial 
which is more enduring, and that is the more real 
part of a man in which his characteristics and his 
qualities are. All the facts and phenomena of life 
confirm the doctrine that the soul is the real man. 
What makes the quality of a man? What gives 
him character as good or bad, small or great, lov- 
able or detestable? Do these qualities pertain to 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 253 

the body? Every one knows that they do not. But 
they are the qualities of the man. Then the real 
man is not the body, but is 'the living soul.' The 
body has absolutely no human quality but what it 
derives from the soul, not even its human form; and 
all that is human about it departs when the soul 
leaves the body — even its human form quickly van- 
ishes. But the man endures. If there is immorlal 
life he has not vanished, except from mortal and 
material sight. As between the soul and the body, 
then, there can be no rational question as to which 
is the substantial and which the evanescent thing. 

"Again, if the immortal soul is the real man, and 
is substantial, what must be its form? It can not 
be a formless, vaporous thing and be a man. Can it 
have other than the human form? Reason clearly 
sees that if formless or in any other form he would 
not be a man. The soul of man, or the real man, is 
a marvelous assemblage of powers and faculties of 
will and understanding; and the human form is such 
as it is because it is perfectly adapted to the exercise 
of these various powers and faculties. In other 
words, the soul forms itself, under the divine 
Maker's hand, into an organism by which it can 
adequately and perfectly put forth its wondrous 
and wonderfully varied powers, and bring its pur- 
poses into acts. 

"The human form is thus an assemblage of 
organs that exactly correspond to and embody and 
are the express image of the various faculties of 
the soul. And there is no organ of the human form 
the absence of which would not hinder and impede 



254 

the free and efficient action and putting forth of the 
soul's powers. And by the human form is not 
meant merely, nor primarily, the organic forms of 
the material body. The faculties are of the soul, 
and if the soul is the man, and endures when the 
body decays and vanishes, it must itself be in a 
form which is an assemblage of organs perfectly 
adapted and adequate to the exercise of its powers; 
that is, in the human form. The human form is 
then primarily and especially the form of the soul — 
which is the perfection of all forms, as man at his 
highest is the consummation and fullness of all lov- 
ing and intelligent attributes. 

" But when does the soul itself take on its human 
form? Is it not until the death of the body? Man- 
ifestly, if it is the very form of the soul, the soul 
can not exist without it, and it is put on in and by 
the fact of its creation and the gradual development 
of its powers. It could have no other form and be 
a human soul. Its organs are the necessary organs 
of its faculties and powers, and these are clothed 
with their similitudes in dead material forms ani- 
mated by the soul for temporary use in the material 
world. The soul is omnipresent in the material 
body, not by diffusion, formlessly, but each organ 
of the soul is within and is the soul of the corre- 
sponding organ of the body; so that every organic 
form of the body, inward and outward, is the mate- 
rial embodiment and counterpart of a correspond- 
ing organ of the soul, by which the soul manifests 
and puts forth its affections and its powers. Thus 
the saying of the Apostle Paul is . literally and 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 255 

exactly true, that, ■ If there is a natural body there 
is also a spiritual body' (I Cor. xv, 44), and that, 
' If the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, 
we have a building of God, a house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens ' (II Cor. v, 1). 

"That the immortal soul is the very man involves 
the eternal preservation of his identity; for in the 
soul are the distinguishing qualities that constitute 
the individuality of a man — all those certain char- 
acteristics, affectional and intellectual, which make 
him such or such a man, and distinguish and differ- 
entiate him from all other men. He remains, there- 
fore, the same man to all eternity. He may become 
more and more, to endless ages, an angel of light — 
even as here a man may advance greatly in wisdom 
and intelligence, and yet is always the same man. 
This doctrine of the soul involves also the perma- 
nency of established character. The life in this 
world is the period of character building. It has 
been very truthfully said that a man is a bundle of 
habits. What manner of man he is depends on 
what his manner of life has been. This is meant by 
the words of the Scriptures, ' Their works do follow 
them' (Rev. xiv, 13), and 'He shall render unto 
every man according to his deeds ' (Mark xvi, 27). 

"If evil and vicious habits are continued through 
life they are fixed and confirmed and become of the 
very life, so that the man loves and desires no other 
life, and does not wish to, will not be led out of 
them, because he loves the practice of them. On 
the other hand, if from childhood a man has been 
inured to virtuous habits, these habits become fixed 



256 world's religious congresses. 

and established and of Ms very sonl and life. In 
either case the habits thus fixed and confirmed are 
of the immortal soul and constitute its permanent 
character. The bodj^, as to its part, has been but 
the pliant instrument of the soul. 

"With respect to the soul's future life the first 
important consideration is what sort of a world it 
will inhabit. If we have shown good reasons for 
believing the doctrine that the soul is not a something 
formless, vague, and shadowy, but is itself an 
organic human form, substantial, and the very man, 
then it must inhabit a substantial and very real 
world. It is a gross fallacy of the senses that there 
is no substance but matter, and nothing substantial 
but what is material. Is not God, the divine, 
omnipotent Creator of all things, substantial % Can 
Omnipotence be an attribute of that which has no 
substance and no form? Is such an existence con- 
ceivable? But he is not material and not visible or 
cognizable by any mortal sense. Yet we know that 
he is substantial; for it is manifest in his wondrous 
and mighty works. There is, then, other substance 
than that which is cognizable to the senses, there is 
even divine substance; and if, as we have clearly 
shown, the soul is substantial, there is spiritual sub- 
stance. And of such substance must be the world 
wherein the soul is eternally to dwell. That the 
spiritual world and the things of it are not visible, 
and not cognizable by any earthly sense, is no evi- 
dence that they are unsubstantial and unreal. The 
interior and most potent things of this natural 
world are not themselves tangible or visible or cog- 




PRINCE MOMOLU MAIS8AQUOI, 

Of the Veys, West Africa. 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 257 

nizable by any sense. It is proverbial that nature 
works unseen. What, for example, do we know of 
electricity except by its wonderful phenomena? Its 
phenomena, its wondrous power in and upon things 
visible and tangible, give proof of it. But what are 
these to the stupendous and varied powers of the 
spiritual within the natural universe which we see 
about us in all the phenomena of vegetable life, and 
even in the inorganic things of nature, which as 
servants of the divine Creator, himself invisible, 
inspire and effect the numberless and marvelous 
activities which make an otherwise inert and dead 
material world to be quick and living, and filled 
with all things beautiful and desirable by man. It 
is the reality of the spiritual world that makes this 
world real, just as it is the reality of the soul that 
makes the human body a reality and a possibility. 
As there could be no body without the soul, there 
could be no natural world without the spiritual. 
Moreover, as it is no.t rational to believe that the 
body which the soul briefly inhabits is more sub- 
stantial than the soul itself, which endures for- 
ever, so it does not satisfy enlightened reason to 
think that this world which is the place of man' s 
temporary sojourn is more substantial than that 
which the soul inhabits forever — that the temporal 
is substantial, and the eternal world spectral and 
unreal. Indeed every rational consideration, how- 
ever viewed, goes to confirm the doctrine that the 
spiritual world is a substantial and real world. 

" Not only is that world substantia], but it must 
be a world of surpassing loveliness and beauty. It 

17 



258 world's religious congresses. 

has justly been considered one of the most benefi- 
cent manifestations of the divine love and wisdom 
that this beautiful world that we briefly inhabit is 
so wondrously adapted to all man's wants and to 
call into exercise and gratify his every faculty and 
good desire. And when he leaves this temporary 
abode, a man with all his faculties and refined by 
freedom from the incumbrance of the flesh, an 
incumbrance which we are often very conscious of, 
will he not enter a world of beauty exceeding the 
loveliest aspects of this ? The soul is human, and 
the world in which it is to dwell is adapted to 
human life; and it would not be adapted to human 
life if it did not adequately meet and answer to the 
soul's desires. Is it reasonable that this material 
world should be so full of life and loveliness and 
beauty, where ' Nature spreads for every sense a 
feast,' to gratify every exalted faculty of the soul, 
and not the spiritual world wherein the soul is to 
abide forever ? Can it be there is no loveliness of 
sight and sound, no springing, joyful life, nothing 
to excite to noble contemplation and fill the mind 
with gratitude and joy % It is not so; but rather as 
it is written: 'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
neither have entered into the heart of man the 
things which God hath prepared for them that love 
him' (I Cor. ii, 9). 

"And the life of that world is human life. The 
same laws of life and happiness obtain there that 
govern here, because they are grounded in human 
nature. Man is a social being, and everywhere, in 
that world as in this, desires and seeks the com- 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 259 

panionship of those that are congenial to him — 
that is, who are of similar quality to himself. Men 
are thus mutually drawn together by spiritual 
affinity. This is the law of association here, but it- 
is less perfectly operative in this world, because 
there is much dissimulation among men, so that 
they often do not appear to be what they really 
are, and thus by false and deceptive appearances 
the good and the evil are often associated together. 
' ' And so it is for a time and in a measure in the 
first state and region into which men come when 
they enter the spiritual world. They go into that 
world as they are, and are at first in a mixed state, 
as in this world. This continues until the real 
character is clearly manifest, and good and. evil 
are separated, and they are thus prepared for 
their final and permanent association and abode. 
They who in the world have made some real effort 
and beginning to live a good life, but have evil 
habits not yet overcome, remain there until they 
are entirely purified of evil, and are fitted for some 
society of heaven; and those who inwardly are evil 
and have outwardly assumed a virtuous garb remain 
until their dissembled goodness is cast off and their 
inward character becomes outwardly manifest. 
When this state of separation is complete there. can 
be no successful dissimulation — the good and the 
evil are seen and known as such, and the law of 
spiritual affinity becomes perfectly operative by 
their own free volition and choice. Then the evil 
and the good become entirely separated into their 
congenial societies. The various societies and com- 



260 WORLD' § RELIGIOUS CONGRESSES. 

m unities of the good thus associated constitute 
heaven and those of the evil constitute hell — not 
by any arbitrary judgment of an angry God, but of 
voluntary choice, by the perfect and unhindered 
operation of the law of human nature that leads 
men to prefer and seek the companionship of those 
most congenial to themselves. 

" As regards the permanency of the state of those 
who by established evil habit are fixed and deter- 
mined in their love of evil life, it is not of the Lord's 
will, but of their own. We are taught in his holy 
Word that he is ever 'gracious and full of com- 
passion.' He would that they should turn from 
their evil ways and live, but they will not. 

" There is no moment, in this or in the future life, 
when the infinite mercy of the Lord would not that 
an evil man should turn from his evil course and 
live a virtuous and upright and happy life; but 
they will not in that world for the same reason that 
they would not in this, because when evil habits are 
once fixed and confirmed they love them and will 
not turn from them. ' Can the Ethiopian change 
his skin or the leopard his spots ? Then may they 
also do good that are accustomed to do evil.' 
Heaven is a heaven of men and the life of heaven 
is human life. The conditions of life in that exalted 
state are greatly different from the conditions here, 
but it is human life adapted to such transcendent 
conditions, and the laws of life in that world, as we 
have seen, are the same as in this. Man was created 
to be a free and willing agent of the Lord to bless 
his kind. His true happiness comes, not in seeking 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 261 

happiness for himself, but seeking to promote the 
happiness of others. Where all are animated by 
this desire, all are mutually and reciprocally blest. 
"Such a state is heaven, whether measurably in 
this world or fully and perfectly in the next. Then 
must there be useful ways in heaven by which they 
can contribute to each other's happiness. And of 
such kind will be the employments of heaven, for 
there must be useful employments. There could 
be no happiness without to beings who are designed 
and formed for usefulness to others. What the 
employments are in that exalted condition we can 
not well know except as some of them are revealed 
to us, and of them we have faint and feeble con- 
ception. But undoubtedly one of them is attend- 
ance upon men in this world. It is written, and the 
words apply to every man: 'He shall give his 
angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways' 
(Ps. xci, 11); and, 'Are they not all ministering 
spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be 
heirs of salvation?' (Heb. i, 14)." 

SOCIOLOGY. 

If the deliverances before the parliament on the- 
ological subjects are not all that could be wished, if 
Christian as well as non-Christian speakers seemed 
less clear and less confident than we had hoped on 
the great subjects of revelation, and reconciliation 
and union with God, and man' s future life and ulti- 
mate destiny, it must be admitted that on practical 
subjects, and in the realm of the motive and method 
of man's helpfulness to man, a positive and, so far 



262 world's religious congresses. 

as it goes, a clear doctrine was set forth. Here we 
meet religion in a new aspect and girded for a new 
experiment. If theology is becoming less exact 
and confident and more speculative, practical 
religion, at least, is becoming more scientific. 
There has sprung up within the memory of this 
generation a new science, with its systematic study 
of the whole structure of society, to discover its 
laws and remove the hindrances, political, econom- 
ical, or customary, which are in the way of its 
welfare. It has given new emphasis to the doctrine 
that society is a man; that "the social fabric is in 
its structure and intent a unit," that " the interde- 
pendence of its parts is as a body with its many 
members unified by a common vitality." The Lord 
had declared it; Paul had expounded it; the church 
had once and again asserted it as the bond of fel- 
lowship and care among its own members; but in 
later times it has come to the front as a doctrine of 
social science independent of religion — that the 
law "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" is a 
' ' law incorporated in the nature of man; ' ' that ' ' men 
are so made that if they would secure for themselves, 
or for the society in which they live, perfection and 
blessedness, they must obey this law;" that "a 
rational self love must at least be made the measure 
of the love and service of others; " and that this is.a 
law of nature and necessity, and when violated man 
comes under its penalties. 

It is a notable fact that in the Parliament of 
Religions this doctrine of social science was taken 
up in the name of religion, and treated with more 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 263 

fullness than any other subject, and that, moreover, 
as the one practical religious consideration. And 
it was here that Christian thought showed its 
unmistakable preeminence, in defining ethical doc- 
trines, to which the non-Christian peoples are 
strangers, and in which they are to find their social 
regeneration. Papers were presented on ' c Christ and 
the Social Question," by Prof. F. G. Peabody of Har- 
vard University ; on " Religion and Wealth, ' ' by Rev . 
Washington Gladden, D.D. ; on " Individual Efforts 
at Reform not Sufficient/' by Prof. R. C. Henderson, 
D.D., of the University of Chicago; on "The Church 
and Labor," by Rev. James M. Cleary; on "Chris- 
tianity as a Social Force," by Prof. Richard T. Ely 
of the University of Wisconsin; " Religion and the 
Erring and Criminal Classes," by Rev. Anna G. 
Spencer, and on other allied subjects. 

This remarkable series of papers was introduced 
by a brief speech from Thomas Wentworth Higgin- 
son, who called attention to the fact that the subject 
of the day marked "a natural turning-point in the 
history of the Parliament of Religions." Up to 
this time, he said, attention had been given almost 
wholly to speculative and abstract ideas ; now it 
was to be turned to the actual facts of life and the 
social questions which press . upon us so tremen- 
dously. He told a characteristic story of "the 
Scotch candidate for the ministry who was being 
examined by some of the sternest of the presbyters, 
or whatever they call them. Every one of his ex- 
aminers stood firm in favor of justification by faith, 
and each one had fifteen minutes of questions, all 



264 world's religious congresses. 

bearing upon faith, to put to him. By and by, when 
the candidate was in an exhausted condition, one 
indiscreet examiner said, ' Well, what do you think 
of good works? ' ' Oh,' said the exhausted candi- 
date, looking around at his persecutors, ''I'll not 
say that it might not be well enough to have a few 
of them.' ' Every oriental that comes to us, he 
said, concedes to us the power of organization, the 
power of labor, the method in actual life, which 
they lack. We could test the real worth of these 
conceded virtues by examining how far they ha^e 
been brought to bear on works for the moral and 
social welfare of men. 

In the paper on ' ' Religion and the Erring and 
Criminal Classes," Anna G. Spencer sought to 
show that "not only does religion give ethics its 
root, but it has also played an enormous part in the 
variations of the moral standards of the world;" 
and after tracing the history of some of these varia- 
tions, she said: 

"There is a new form of religion dawning upon 
the Western world, and I believe also upon the 
Eastern. Christianity was and is a composite faith, 
compounded of Jewish religious ideals, of Greek 
thought, Roman organization, and of Germanic 
racial influences of domestic and social habit. The 
new religious ideal which is shaping the reform 
movements of Christianity, and of other great his- 
toric faiths as well, is the outgrowth on its thought 
side of that new conception of the universe and man's 
relation to it, that new conception which is cosmical 
and universal rather than racial or special. The 



akeligious symposium. 265 

new religious philosophy finds the synthesis of all 
religions in the universal and eternal elements of 
human aspiration toward the everlasting truth, 
the absolute right, the boundless love, and the per- 
fect beauty! This conception, in brief, puts at the 
center of all things perceived or experienced ' one law, 
one light, one element, and one far-off divine event 
toward which the whole creation moves.' This 
new and scientific thought conception makes of 
morals, not a series of obligatory commands given 
by one God or many gods to one race or many races, 
but a turning of the will of man by the force of 
moral gravitation toward that central law which 
reveals itself in the human conscience and is de- 
veloped through social influences, and in obedience 
to which alone mankind finds his true orbit of action. 
This view of morals, which is fast becoming common 
to all enlightened men of all historic faiths, has 
already started the newest tendencies in the treat- 
ment of vice and crime. Those newest tendencies 
we set down as reformatory, those which aim to 
make over the criminal and erring into law-abiding 
and respectable members of society." 

"The new scientific element in religion," she said, 
"has given us social science of which enlightened 
penology is a part. The old word of religion said 
to the soul: 'Be ye perfect here and now, no mat- 
ter how ye were born or trained, or in what depths 
of social degradation ye find yourself.' The new 
religion says that also — such forever must be the 
clarion call to the will to work out a personal salva- 
tion or it will cease to be religion. The religion of 



266 woeld's keligious congresses. 

the future, however, which is already born, has 
taken counsel of facts as well as of faith, and it has 
added the social ideal to the personal. It has 
learned that evil heredity, and poor physique, and 
degraded home influences, and bad social surround- 
ings, and too severe toil, and too little happiness and 
education make for millions of mankind walled bar- 
riers of circumstance, behind which the dull and 
torpid soul catches but faint echoes of the divine 
summons. The relation of this new religion to the 
criminal and erring classes is not only the tender- 
ness of human sympathy which would not that any 
should perish ; it is the consecration of human wis- 
dom to social betterment which shall yet forbid 
that any shall perish. In this new ideal of religion 
the call is not only to justice for the criminal and 
erring after they come within the scope of social 
control, but it is the call also to a study of those 
conditions in the individual and in society which 
make for crime and vice; and above all it is the call 
for the social lifting of all the weaker souls of our 
common humanity upon the winged strength of its 
wisest and best. The new social ideal in religion 
calls upon us to make this world so helpful a place 
to live in ' for the least of these our brethren ' that 
it shall yet be as easy for the will to follow good- 
ness ' and the heart to be true, as for grass to be 
green or skies to be blue,' in the ' natural way of 
living.' " 

What she calls the new religion, Prof. F. G. 
Peabody contends is the religion of the gospels, but 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 267 

with care to balance the importance of the indi- 
vidual and social factors as objects of Christian love. 
Pointing out that the theological seminaries are 
adding the new field of sociology, he asks, Is there 
danger that the new humanitarianism may crowd 
out the old religion? 

"When the Christian turns to the social questions 
is he, on the one hand, turning away from the 
themes of a Christian church, or is he, on the other 
hand, sacrificing Christ to society, or is there, lastly, 
any law laid down by Christ himself which directs 
a Christian in his study of such affairs? That is the 
question with which we turn to Christ, and he gives 
us a clear and often-reiterated reply. One of the 
first things which strikes one as he reads the gospels 
is that Jesus Christ was a great individualist. His 
appeal is always to the single life; his central doc- 
trine of humanity is that of the infinite worth of 
each single soul. 

"Nothing can make up for the loss of the indi- 
vidual. The shepherd goes out after the one lost 
sheep; the woman sweeps the house to find the one 
bit of money; the gain of the world is nothing if a 
man loses his own soul. Thus Christ and his teach- 
ings stand forever over against the schemes which 
are going to redeem the world by any impersonal 
mechanical plan. He seeks to save men one at a 
time; his kingdom is within; he calls his disciples 
singly; he calleth his own sheep by name and 
leadeth them out. It is a personal relation, an 
individual work . " 

This personal method of Jesus, he shows, has 



268 world's religious congresses. 

given the idea of individual worth, and influenced 
largely the effort of the churches to benefit men. 
And then he turns to consider ' ' one whole side 
of the teaching of Jesus which such a view entirely 
ignores. Suppose one goes on to ask humbly: 
' Why does Christ thus appeal to the individual ? 
Why is the single soul of such infinite worth to 
him? Is it for its own sake? Is there this tre- 
mendous significance about my little being and 
doing that it has its own isolated worth 1 ' Not at all. 
A man' s life, taken by itself, is just what it seems 
— a very insignificant affair. What is it that gives 
significance to such a single life ? It is its relation 
to the whole of which it is a part. Just as each 
minutest wheel is essential in some great machine, 
just as the health of each slighted limb or organ in 
your body affects the vitality and health of the 
whole, so stands the individual in the organic life 
of the social world. 'We are members of one 
another.' 'We are one body in Christ;' 'no man 
liveth or dieth to himself — so runs the Christian 
conception of the common life; and in this organic 
relationship the individual finds the meaning and 
worth of his own isolated self. What is this con- 
ception in Christ's own language ? It is his marvel- 
ous ideal of what he calls 'the kingdom of God,' 
that perfected world of humanity in which, as in a 
perfect body, each part should be sound and whole, 
and thus the body be complete. How Jesus looked 
and prayed for this coming of a better world ! The 
kingdom of heaven is the one thing to desire. It is 
the good seed of the future; it is the leaven 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 269 

dropped into the mass of the world; it is the hidden 
treasure, the pearl of great price. It may come 
slowly, as servants look for a reckoning after 3- ears 
of duty done; it may come suddenly, as virgins 
wake and meet the bridegroom. 

"However and wherever this Christian common- 
wealth, this kingdom of God, arrives, then and 
there only will the hopes of Jesus be fulfilled. 
'Thy kingdom come' is the central prayer of the 
disciple of Christ. What does this mean, then, as 
to Christ's thought of society? It means that a 
completed social order was his highest dream. We 
have seen that he was the great individualist of 
history. We now see that he was the great social- 
ist as well. His hope for man was a universal hope. 
What he prophesied was just that enlarged and 
consolidated life of man which many modern dreams 
repeat, where all the conflicts of selfishness should 
be outgrown, and there should be one kingdom and 
one king; one motive — that of love; one unity 
— that of the spirit; one law — that of liberty. Was 
ever socialistic prophet of a revolutionary society 
more daring, or sanguine, or, to practical minds, 
more impracticable than this visionary Jesus with 
his assurance of a coming kingdom of God % 

" But how can it be, we go on to ask once more, 
that the same teacher can teach such opposite 
truths \ How can Christ appeal thus to the single 
soul and yet hope thus for the kingdom ? How 
can he be at once the great individualist and the 
great socialist of history % Are we confronted with 
an inconsistency in Christ's doctrine of human life ? 



270 world's religious congresses. 

On the contrary, we reach here the very essence of 
the gospel in its relation to human needs. The two 
teachings, that of the individual and that of the 
social order, that of the part and that of the whole, 
are not exclusive of each other or opposed to each 
other, but are essential parts of the one law of Christ. 
Why is the individual soul of such inestimable 
value % Because of its essential part in the organic 
social life. And why is the kingdom of God set 
before each individual? To free him from all 
narrowness and selfishness of aim. Think of those 
great words of Jesus, spoken as he looked back on 
his completed work: 'For their sakes I sanctify 
myself. ' ' For their sakes ' — that is the sense of the 
common life working as a motive beyond all personal 
desire, even for holiness itself. ' I sanctify myself ' 
— that is the way in which the common life is to be 
saved. The individual is the means; the kingdom 
of God is the end. 

"The way to make a better world is first of all 
to make your own soul better, and the way to make 
your own soul better is to stir it with the sense 
of the common life. And so the same master of the 
problem of life becomes at once the most positive of 
individualists and the most visionary of socialists. 
His first appeal is personal: ' Sanctify thyself.' 
His second call is to the common life: 'For their 
sakes ' ; and the. end and the means together make 
the motto of a Christian life — 'For their sakes I 
sanctify myself.' Such is Christ in his dealing with 
the social question. He does not ignore the social 
problems of any age, but he approaches them 



A KELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 271 

always at their personal ends. With unfailing 
sagacity he declines to be drawn into special 
questions of legislation or programmes of reform. 
Changes of government are not for him to make. 
'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.' 
The precise form of the coming kingdom is not for 
him to define. ' To sit on my right hand is not mine 
to give.' It is in vain to claim Jesus Christ as the 
expounder of any social panacea. He simply brings 
all such schemes and dreams to the test of a uni- 
versal principle, the principle of sanctifying one's 
self for others' sakes, the two-fold principle of the 
infinite worth of the individual and the infinite 
hope of a kingdom of God, and of every plan and 
work which is proposed for social welfare, Christ 
says: 'Let it begin with the individual — his 
character, his liberty, his enlargement of life — and 
then out of this individual sanctification will grow 
the better social world.' " 

Professor Peabody admits that we have not ad- 
vanced far in the solution of these problems; pan- 
aceas have not worked, and individual reformation 
does not seem to issue in works that have much 
social value. He turns to ask Christ's method 
toward poverty, and shows that what he wants is 
man' s soul ' ' trained into personal power, individual 
capacity, self-help," and concludes there is more 
" Christian charity in teaching a trade than in alms, 
in finding work than in relieving want." He turns 
on the other hand to ask Christ s attitude toward 
the rich, and concludes that his condemnation ' ' was 



272 world's religious congresses. 

directed, not against the fact of wealth, but against 
the abuses and perils of wealth." He would have 
us warned of the same dangers to-day. ' ' We might 
as well face the fact that one of the severest tests of 
character which our time affords has to be borne by 
the rich. The person who proposes to maintain 
simplicity and sympathy, responsibility and high- 
mindedness in the midst of the wealth and luxury 
of the modern times is undertaking that which he 
had better at once understand to be very hard. The 
rich have some advantages, but they unmistakably 
have also many disadvantages, and the Christianiza- 
tion of wealth is beyond question the most serious of 
modern problems. But this is not saying that rich 
men should be abolished. Wealth only provides a 
severer school for the higher virtues of life, and the 
man or woman who can really learn the lesson of 
that school has gained one of the hardest, but also 
one of the most fruitful, experiences of modern 
times." 

He concludes that in the complications of modern 
society wealth has a new function, and in its admin - 
istration the Christian has a new mission. " Christ 
comes into the business world of to-day and, seek- 
ing the man who wants to be his disciple, says to 
him, ' This world of affairs is not to be abandoned, 
nor yet to be feared; it is to be redeemed. Enter 
into it. Be as sagacious, far-sighted, intelligent, 
judicious as the children of this world. Be a 
thoughtful, good man of business. And then add 
to this self- culture the larger motive, the bringing 
in of my kingdom. Ask yourself this question of 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 273 

your business : 'Am I in it hindering or helping the 
better life of men % Am I in any degree responsible 
for the ends of the present industrial system, or am 
I lessening them by the methods of my own \ Is 
my success at the cost of my employes' degradation, 
or do they share the satisfaction of my own pros- 
perity? In short, am I helping to make this world 
God's world, or would it, if all dealt as I do, soon 
be the devil's world? ' Then, having answered this 
question in your soul, realize still further how many 
of the first signs of the coming kingdom wait for 
business men to show.' 

' c The Christian in business to-day is looking for 
every stable relation between employer and em- 
ployed. Cooperation is to him better than compe- 
tition. He sees his own life in the light of the 
common good. The Christian in business discov- 
ers that good lodgings for the working classes are 
both wise charity and good business. The Christian 
in business holds his sagacity and insight at the 
service of public affairs. He is not ensnared in the 
meshes of his own prosperity. He owns his wealth; 
it does not own him. The community leans on him 
instead of his being a dead weight on the commu- 
nity. He teaches us the higher use of wealth instead 
of warning us of its fearful perils. And when the 
Christian business man dies the properties he has 
controlled do not rise in the market because the 
risk of his management is gone, but the business 
world says of him, ' This man was a consistent 
Christian. He did not fear or flee from the world, 
but he made it the instrument of the higher life of 

18 



274 world's eeligious congresses. 

man. In this world's battles lie was a good soldier 
of Jesus Christ.' " 

Prof. Richard T. Ely spoke in more emphatic and 
positive terms of "Christianity as a Social Force," 
to show that individualism, as commonly under- 
stood, is non-Christian. Wealth, and talent, and 
position, and powers are in trust for the common 
good, and individual salvation which ignores this is 
not, within the true Christian idea, possible. Offer- 
ing some severe criticism of the social condition of 
Christendom, Professor Ely concludes as follows : 

u We may thus say that Christianity as a social 
force stands for the conservation of energy. It 
seeks the utilization of all human power for the 
advancement of the welfare of man, and it tends to 
preserve the achievements of the past because it 
means peaceful progress. It may be thus said that 
Christianity stands for progress emphatically, but 
for conservative progress. Christianity means a 
mighty transformation and turning of things upside 
down, and while it seeks to bring about the most 
radical changes in peace, it has forces within it 
which nothing can withstand and resistance to which 
is sure to result in revolutionary violence. It is 
true that Christ said he came to bring not peace, 
but a Fword — signifying the opposition of malevo- 
lence to social progress; yet a fruitless opposition, 
for in the end the peace of Christ must triumph. 
We can imagine Christ among us to-day, pointing, 
as of old, to our great temples and warning us that 
the time will come when one stone of them shall not 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 275 

rest upon another. We can imagine Christ point- 
ing to our grade crossings and to our link and pin 
couplers, covered with the blood of mutilated brake- 
men, and crying out to us: ' Woe unto you, hypo- 
crites! Ye do these things, and for a pretense make 
long prayers.' We can also imagine him summon- 
ing before our vision the thousands who have lost 
their limbs in needless industrial accidents, and 
pointing to the hospitals to relieve them, and the 
charities to furnish them with artificial limbs, and 
again uttering one of his terrible maledictions: i Woe 
unto you, hypocrites! ' We can also imagine him 
in his scathing denunciations and heart-searching 
sermons opening our eyes to our social iniquities 
and shortcomings, and calling to mind the judgment 
to come in which reward or penalty shall be visited 
upon us, either as we have or have not ministered 
to those who needed our ministrations — the hungry, 
the naked, the prisoner, and the captive. The 
reward: 'Come, ye blessed of my Father, inasmuch 
as ye have done it unto the least of these ye have 
done it unto me;' the penalty: 'Inasmuch as ye 
have not done it unto the least of these — depart 
from me.' " 

Discussing " Religion and Riches," the Rev. 
Washington Gladden, so well and widely known in 
this field of research, declared "poverty and per- 
fection incompatible," and held that " the religious 
man must be a co-worker with God, not only in the 
production of wealth, but also in the distribution of 
wealth." In answering the question, " Can we dis- 
cover God's plan for this distribution? " he says: 



276 world's religious congresses. 

" It is pretty clear that the world has not as yet 
discovered God's plan. The existing distribution is 
far from being ideal. While tens of thousands are 
rioting in superfluity, hundreds of thousands are 
suffering for the lack of the necessaries of life; some 
are even starving. That the suffering is often due 
to indolence and improvidence and vice — a natural 
penalty which ought to be set aside — may be freely 
admitted, but when that is all taken account of there 
is a great deal of penury left which it is hard to 
justify in view of the opulence everywhere visible. 
What is the rule by which the wealth of the world 
is now distributed? Fundamentally, I think, it is 
the rule of the strongest. The rule has been greatly 
modified in the progress of civilization; a great 
many kinds of violence are now prohibited; in many 
ways the weak are protected by law against the en- 
croachments of the strong; human rapacity is con- 
fined within certain metes and bounds; nevertheless, 
the wealth of the world is still, in the main, the 
prize of strength and skill. Our laws furnish the 
rules of the game, but the game is essentially as 
Rob Roy describes it. To every one according to 
his power is the underlying principle of the present 
system of distribution. It is evident that under 
such a system, in spite of legal restraints, the strong 
will trample upon the weak. We can not believe 
that such a system can be in accordance with the 
will of a Father to whom the poor and needy are 
the especial objects of care." . 

Discussing the three socialistic X3rinciples which 
have been by one and another suggested, "to every 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 277 

one alike; to every one according to his needs; to 
every one according to Ms work," lie thinks it evi- 
dent ' ' that none of these methods, taken by itself, 
would furnish a rule in perfect harmony with divine 
justice and benignity. The communistic rule is 
clearly unjust and impracticable. To give to all an 
equal portion would be wasteful in the extreme, for 
some could by no possibility use their portion; much 
of it would be squandered and lost. Some could use 
productively and beneficently ten times, or even a 
thousand times more than others. The divine wis- 
dom must follow somewhat closely the rule of the 
man in the parable who distributed his goods among 
his servants, giving ' to every man according to his 
several ability.' But ability here is not ability to 
take, but ability to use beneficently and product- 
ively, which is a very different matter." And he 
concludes that ' ' the divine plan must, therefore, be 
that wealth shall be so distributed as to secure the 
greatest results. And religion, which seeks to dis- 
cern and follow the divine plan, must teach that the 
wealth of the world will be rightly distributed only 
when every man shall have as much as he can wisely 
use to make himself a better man and the community 
in which he lives a better community — so much and 



In a paper on "Churches and City Problems," 
Prof. A. W. Small, Ph. D., of the University of 
Chicago, declared that "churches as such do not 
think the thoughts, nor talk the language, nor 
share the burdens which, for the masses in cities, 



278 world's religious congresses. 

contain the real problems in life. " " The churches, ' ' 
he says again, "have no explicit policy toward city 
problems; lack intelligent interest in them; they 
are even suspicious of every endeavor to commit 
the churches to cooperation in solutions." He con- 
cludes that the churches must choose between the 
only alternatives: "First, they may confine them- 
selves to the functions of spiritual edification, of 
indoctrinating the children of their members, of 
defending their denominational orthodoxy, and of 
evangelizing at home and abroad;' ' or " second, they 
may accept the full responsibility of revealers and 
realizers of right relations of men to each other as 
well as of men to God." In choosing the first alter- 
native the function might be logically fundamental, 
but it must prove practically partial and self-limit- 
ing. In choosing the other alternative, there must 
be interdenominational organization and coopera- 
tion, on the basis of brotherhood, without sinking 
doctrinal differences. 

Professor Small notes that recent papal deliv- 
erances upon the attitude of the Roman church 
toward ' ' labor jjroblems ' ' are perhaps the nearest 
approach to a settlement of denominational policy 
with reference to any of these problems. A paper 
by Charles F. Donnelly, on "The Relations of the 
Roman Catholic Church to the Poor and Destitute," 
traced the history of her St. Vincent de Paul and 
other societies based on the principle of charity 
which would lift men into conditions of integ- 
rity and self-help, both morally and materially. 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 279 

Another by the Rev. James M. Cleary defined the 
position of the church with reference to "Labor 
Problems" as follows: 

" The church having taught every child of Adam 
who earned his bread by laborious toil to assert his 
own dignity and to understand his own worth, and 
having hitherto led a hopeless multitude from the 
dismal gloom of slavery to the cheering brightness 
of the liberty of the children of God, bravely 
defended the rights and the privileges of her eman- 
cipated children. 'The church has regarded with 
religious care the inheritance of the poor.' The 
poor are the special charge of the church. Every 
living soul is in God's immediate care, the rich as 
well as the poor; there is no distinction of class or 
privilege with him. Every soul, whether refined or 
rude, is in his keeping. But with an especial care 
he watches over those who ' eat bread in the sweat 
of their brow.' None need the Divine Comforter 
more than the weary children of toil, and none need 
and have received the sympathy of the church as 
they do. In his exhaustive encyclical on the con- 
dition of labor Leo XIII. lays down the principle 
that the workman's wages is not a problem to be 
solved by the pitiless arithmetic of avaricious greed. 
The wage- earner has rights which he can not sur- 
render, and which no man can take from him, for 
he is an intelligent, responsible being owing hom- 
age to God and duties to human society. His 
recompense, then, for his daily toil can not be 
measured by a heartless standard of supply and 
demand, or a cruel code of inhuman economics, for 



280 world's religious congresses. 

man is not a money-making machine, but a citizen 
of earth and an heir to the kingdom of heaven. He 
has a right, of which no man has the power to 
deprive him, 'to the pursuit of life, liberty, and 
happiness.' Every man has a God-given right to 
live in decency and comfort. Labor has a right to 
freedom; labor has also a right to protect its own 
independence and liberty. Hence labor unions are 
lawful and have enjoyed the sanction and protec- 
tion of the church in all ages. Our times have wit- 
nessed no more edifying spectacle than the noble, 
unselfish pleading of our own Cardinal Gibbons for 
the cause of organized labor at the See of Peter. 
In organization there is strength, but labor must 
use its power for its own protection, not for invad- 
ing the rights of others. The strike, or refusal of 
united ]abor to work, is a declaration of war, for it 
seriously disturbs many human activities. It is 
justifiable only and should be resorted to only when 
all other means have failed, when every other 
expedient has been exhausted, and can be defended 
only on the plea that the workman is treated 
unjustly by organized capital. That form of strike, 
however, by which labor unions use unlawful means 
to prevent willing men who are anxious to earn a 
livelihood for their families from engaging in honest 
work can in no way be defended, and must surely fall 
under the unqualified censure of religion. Labor has 
a right, it is true, to prevent its own degradation, 
and is justified in insisting that wages shall not be 
so reduced as to prevent Christian men from living 
like civilized beings, but religion, which is the guar- 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 281 

dian angel of social order and just law, nrast insist 
that when such evils threaten society they are rem- 
edied by legislation and not by appeals to force. 

"Our Christian civilization must not be endan- 
gered by false maxims and harsh methods of social 
economy. Our civilization is a failure if it aims 
only at the protection of wealth and the guardian- 
ship of property. 

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay. 

"Men are more precious than money. The con- 
tented Christian homes of an intelligent people, 
happy in the opportunity of earning a decent com- 
petence for present and future needs, are the safest 
and most hopeful support of a nation and encour- 
aging evidences of national prosperity. Religion' s 
duty is to teach the rich the responsibilities of 
wealth and the poor respect for order and law. 
The security of capital against the discontent and 
envy of labor is the best security also for the work- 
ingman. When capital becomes timid and shrinks 
from the hazard of investment, labor soon feels the 
pangs of hunger, and the dread specter of want 
casts its dismal shadow over many a humble home. 

"Religion is the only influence that has been able 
to subdue the pride and the passions of men, to 
refine the manners and guide the conduct of human 
society, so that rich and poor alike, mindful of their 
common destiny, respect each other's rights, their 
mutual dependence, and the rights of their common 
Father in heaven. The religious teachers and guides 
who apply the principles of the ' Sermon on the 



282 world's religious congresses. 

Mount' to the every-day affairs of men, and lead 
humanity upward to a better and nobler realization 
of God's compassion for the weary ones of earth, 
will merit the undying gratitude of men and heav- 
en's choicest rewards." 

Space will not admit of further analysis of this 
valuable series of papers. If the result in outline 
of methods of social reform is not wholly satisfac- 
tory, it is at least evident that the religious motive 
for the study and solution of social problems has 
received eminent consideration, and is asserted with 
a unanimity which demonstrates great progress in 
Christendom along these lines. If the study of 
sociology and efforts in social reform have to be 
carried on for the most part independent of Chris- 
tian ecclesiastical organizations, it is evident that 
its advocates intend to claim the sanction and 
authority of Christ and the gospels in the adjust- 
ment of the inherent and necessary rights and re- 
sponsibilities of the individual and the social body, 
under the ideal of the voluntary contribution of each 
to the common good and of all to the good of each. 

WOMAN. 

' ' The place which woman has taken in the Par- 
liament of Religions and in the denominational 
congresses," said the remarkably efficient and ever- 
gracious president of the woman's branch, Mrs. 
Charles Henrotin, in her concluding address, "is 
one of such great importance that it is entitled to 
vour careful attention:" 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 283 

It will interest many to know what place 
exactly woman occupied to her own highest honor, 
and as indicating the field of her most permanent 
achievements, in the judgment of this executive 
woman, who had such exceptional opportunities 
for estimating the value of the work of her sister 
co-laborers. The series of auxiliary congresses 
was opened in May with a congress of representa- 
tive women, which, was one of the most largely 
attended and popular in the whole series. This, 
with the active part taken by women in all the suc- 
ceeding congresses, led many to wonder if the order 
of the world might not be changing, and woman be 
destined to take the lead in the forensic work which 
has heretofore been assumed to belong to man. 
The men and women who worked together on com- 
mittees, in the laborious and varied preparations 
which were necessary to the success of the con- 
gresses, knew well that if the field of her endeavor 
is enlarging, her power is just what it has always 
been — the power of patient, persistent, gracious, 
and humanizing work. It is interesting in this 
connection to have the following testimony from 
such a representative of her sex as Mrs. Henrotin: 

' ' As day by day the parliament has presented 
the result of the preliminary work of two years, it 
may have appeared to you an easy thing to put 
into motion the forces of which this evening is the 
crowning achievement, but to bring about this 
result hundreds of men and women have labored. 
There are sixteen committees of women in the vari- 
ous departments represented in the Parliament of 



284 world's religious congresses. 

Religions and denominational congresses, with a 
total membership of 228. In many cases the men's 
and the women's committee have elected to work as 
one and in others the women have held separate 
congresses. Sixteen women have spoken in the Par- 
liament of Religions, and that more did not appear 
is due to the fact that the denominational commit- 
tee had secured the most prominent women for their 
presentation. Doctor Barrows treated the woman's 
branch with that courtesy and consideration, and I 
may add justice, which he has extended to the rep- 
resentatives of every creed. In the denominational 
congresses the first in order was that of the Jewish 
women, and here is the key-note to woman's position 
in the modern religious w T orld. It is that of the 
worker, for it is not in the Parliament of Religions, 
as able as have been the women representing her in 
the parliament, that you can judge of the tremen- 
dous power which she wields. It is in the denom- 
inational congress that her work is best illustrated. 
' ' In the Roman Catholic congress the work of the 
women for their church was most ably presented. 
His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons, in his paper, ' The 
Needs of Humanity Supplied by the Catholic Re- 
ligion,' demonstrated that the needs of humanity 
were ministered unto by women, laity as well 
as sisters, in the Catholic church. His paper 
could fitly have been named, ' What Woman Has 
Accomplished for the Catholic Church.' The con- 
gress of the Jewish women was a memorable 
occasion, as it was the first time in the world's 
history that the Jewish women met together as 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 285 

a religious power. Eighty-five delegates from the 
different Jewish communities from all parts of the 
United States were present, and before this con- 
gress adjourned an international association of Jew- 
ish women was formed, and if it brings into the 
religious world the same zeal which has animated 
that historic race, it is easy to conceive what a tre- 
mendous force has here been put into motion. The 
committee of Congregational women held an inter- 
esting session treating of practical questions con- 
nected with church work. The women of the 
Lutheran church succeeded in uniting the Lutheran 
women all over the United States in one congress, 
and held four sessions in which Lutheran women 
spoke on the work of women in their church. 
Before this congress closed an international league 
of Lutheran women was formed. The King's 
Daughters presented their work on Monday, Octo- 
ber 2d. In all the other denominational congresses 
women have presented their work in the general 
congress. Two hundred and twelve women have 
taken part in the denominational and mission con- 
gresses. Now the question presents itself, along 
what line of thought have most of these women pre- 
sented papers? And I may truly answer that they 
have treated of practical efforts for the bettering of 
social conditions." 

In the many excellent papers presented by women 
on the theory of woman' s place and work in the 
world, many suggestions were set forth, but the one 
assured conviction and purpose running through 



286 world's religious congresses. 

them all is perhaps most adequately voiced by the 
following passages from Miss Willard's address: 

"We are then beginning to train those with each 
other who were formed for each other, and the Eng- 
lish-speaking home, with its Christian method of a 
twofold headship, based on laws natural and divine, 
is steadily rooting out all that remains of the me- 
dieval, continental, and harem philosophies con- 
cerning this greatest problem of all time. The true 
relations of that complex being whom God created 
by uttering the mystic thought that had in it the 
potency of paradise, ' In our own image let us make 
man, and let him have dominion over all the earth,' 
will ere long be ascertained by means of the new 
correlation and attuning each to other of a more 
complete humanity upon the Christ-like basis that 
'there shall be no more curse.' " 

u She is the embodiment of what shall be. In an 
age of force woman's greatest grace was to cling; 
in this age of peace she doesn't cling much, but is 
every bit as tender and as sweet as if she did. She 
has strength and individuality, a gentle serious- 
ness; there is more of a sister, less of the siren; 
more of the duchess and less of the doll. Woman 
is becoming what God meant her to be, and Christ's 
gospel necessitates her being, the companion and 
counselor, not the incumbrance and toy, of men. 
To meet this new creation how grandly men them- 
selves are growing, how considerate and brotherly, 
how pure in word and deed! The world has never 
yet known half the aptitude of character and life 
to which men will attain when they and women live 



A RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM. 287 

in the same world. It doth not yet appear what they 
shall be, or we either, for that matter, but in many 
a home presided over by a temperance voter and a 
white-ribbon worker I have thought the heavenly 
vision was really coming down to terra firm a. With 
all my heart I believe, as do the best men of the 
nation, that woman will bless and brighten every 
place she enters, and that she will enter every place. 
Its welcome of her presence and her power will be 
the final test of any institution's fitness to survive." 

As Mrs. Henrotin said: "It is too soon to prog- 
nosticate woman's future in the churches. 
Hitherto she has been not the thinker, the formu- 
lator of creeds, but the silent worker. That day 
has passed; it remains for her to take her rightful 
position in the active government of the church, 
and to the question, if men will accord that posi- 
tion to her, my experience and that of the chairmen 
of the woman's committees warrants us in answer- 
ing an emphatic yes. Her future in the western 
churches is in her own hands, and the men of the 
eastern churches will be emboldened by the 
example of the western to return to their country 
and bid our sisters of those distant lands to go and 
do likewise. Woman has taken very literally 
Christ's command to feed the hungry, clothe the 
naked, heal the sick, and to minister unto those 
who are in need of such ministrations; as her 
influence and power increase, so also will her zeal 
for good works. That the experiment of an equal 
presentation of men and women in a parliament of 



288 world's religious congresses. 

religions has not been a. failure I think can be 
proved by the part taken by the women who have 
had the honor of being called to participate in this 
great gathering. I must now bear witness to the 
devotion, the unselfishness, and the zeal of the 
chairman of every committee who has assisted in 
arranging these programmes. I would that I had 
the time to name them one by one. Their generous 
cooperation and unselfish endeavor are of those 
good things the memory of which is in this life a 
foreshadowing of how divine is the principle of 
loyal cooperation in working for righteousness." 

These generous words, in which she pays tribute 
to her earnest, modest, and as a rule notably 
prudent and intelligent co-workers, set the text 
upon which every man intimately associated in the 
preparations for the congresses, and in their con- 
duct, would like to enlarge. Regretting that the 
limits of this review will not permit detailed 
notice of the manifold ways in which the women of 
the several committees contributed to their success, 
I wish to record the conviction, founded in observa- 
tion and experience, that without the self-sacrific- 
ing and wise work of these women, continued from 
the beginning throughout the organization, neither 
the parliament nor the denominational congresses 
could have been carried out with such breadth, 
and in such a spirit of charity and cooperation, as 
was achieved, and which constitutes their chief 
value. 



r 




B. B. NAGARKAK, 

Brahmo-Somaj, Bombay, India. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE DENOMINATIONAL CONGRESSES. 

THE Parliament of Religions was but a part of 
the series of religious congresses, and though 
it was in itself an event so notable and of 
such popular interest as to overshadow the others 
at the time, it will be found when the contributions 
to the several denominational congresses are pub- 
lished that the highest and most valuable work of 
Christian thinkers was put into the preparation for 
them. Over thirty congresses of different denomi- 
nations and religious societies were held concur- 
rently with and in the weeks preceding and 
following the parliament, each one of which was of 
sufficient dignity and importance to have attracted 
international attention at any other time. There 
was among the committees some disappointment 
that the programmes, so carefully matured, and 
commanding the best thought of representative men 
and women in preparation, should have been so 
completely overshadowed; bat upon second thought 
it has appeared to most of those interested that the 
great success of that event, as a signal demonstra- 
tion of both the need and the possibility of frater- 
nal frankness and comparison, will give to the 
proceedings of the special congresses, when pub- 
lished, an importance and value entirely worthy of 

19 (289) 



290 world's religious congresses. 

the labor spent upon them. Without any attempt 
to represent the matter of over thirty elaborately 
prepared programmes, we can only here glance at 
a few characteristic features of them. 

The Jewish Congress, beginning August 27th, 
showed how completely modern Judaism is organ- 
izing for the ethical education of its peox>le, and 
displayed more zeal of propagandism than it has 
been usually credited with. Subjects ranging from 
the fundamental doctrines of Judaism through 
ethics and the influence of Judaism upon civiliza- 
tion down to the organization and methods of char- 
itable relief were treated, presenting the whole 
scope of Jewish thought, organization, and work; 
and to this was added the congress of Jewish 
women, treating of women, home, charity, and mis- 
sion work among the uneducated — a thoroughly 
practical series of papers, of value mainly to their 
own people as imparting to them the inspiration of 
history, and a larger conception of educational, 
ethical, and charitable work. 

The Columbian Catholic Congress, which was 
held the week preceding the parliament, presented 
a programme notable for the attention given to the 
relation of the church to government and social 
questions. Assured of its position, only eager to 
define the harmony of its spiritual interests with the 
civil order and institutions among which it works, 
it addressed itself largely to the " social question" 
in its various phases, the rights of labor, the duties 
of capital, poverty, public and private charities, 
labor unions, strikes and arbitration, women and 



THE DENOMINATIONAL CONGRESSES. 291 

their work, and education. Both the papers, and 
the discussions in the sections to which they were 
assigned, showed the completeness and elasticity of 
the org mization, which has been built uj) to cover 
all ranges of life, and carry help to the lowest in 
the name of religion. 

The Congregational, Methodist, Lutheran, and 
other evangelical Protestant bodies ran much to the 
history of the denomination, less to the origin and 
development of doctrine; giving full attention to 
missionary motive and machinery, and, where the 
women took a distinctive part, to education, the 
home, missionary appeal to the erring, and help to 
the helpless. 

Universalism argued the goodness of G-od, the 
essential holiness of man, the destructibility of sin, 
the self-perpetuating power of goodness, with par- 
donable rejoicing at the "Renaissance of Universal- 
ism" in the various sects of Christendom. Uni- 
tarianism presented its theological method, its 
place in the development of Christianity, its influ- 
ence in literature, philanthropy, and in the growth 
of democracy, its history, doctrines, and organized 
working forces. Even the Congress of Evolutionists 
gave much time to ethics and religion, setting forth 
the bearing of the doctrine of evolution upon belief 
in immortality and the development of Christianity. 

In the New Jerusalem Church Congress an elab- 
orate series of papers set forth the Swedenborgian 
doctrine on the unity of God's ways to man in the 
successive dispensations or churches, on the history 
of revelation and the opening of the spiritual sense 



292 world's religious congresses. 

of the sacred Scriptures, revealing the one Lord, and 
one church with its successive ages, and the doc- 
trines which constitute the basis of a universal faith 
and charity. In another series the mission of its 
doctrines to the Gentiles, to the Christian denomina- 
tions, to biblical criticism, to science, to philosophy, 
to the historian, to literature and art, to sociology 
and government, and in education. In still another 
series the relation of woman's work to man's, in 
the church, the home, and the religious world. 

Congresses were held by the Young Men's and 
Young Women's Christian associations, by the 
Evangelical Alliance, and a world's congress of 
missions, covering the needs, problems, and pro- 
visions for city, home, and foreign evangelization — 
all serious, generous in plan, and striking in the 
ability of the contributions offered to the advance- 
ment of the causes represented. Indeed, the only 
criticism to be offered is upon the appalling 
breadth of subject, amount of detail, and wealth of 
thought brought under review. This difficulty can 
only be overcome when the several committees pub- 
lish their papers for the use of those whose interest 
and fitness lead them into one or another of these 
interesting fields of inquiry. But if the complete 
library stood before us, no single mind could fully 
appreciate the amount and worth of original, honest, 
and painstaking thought in this Columbian exhibit 
of the mind and work of the world in morals and 
religion. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FAREWELL MEETINGS IN COLUMBUS AND WASHING- 
TON HALLS. 

THE closing scene of the Parliament of Relig- 
ions fulfilled the promise of its opening, and 
will live forever in the memory of those who 
were fortunate enough to participate in it or to wit- 
ness it. If the 8,000 people who assembled to hear 
the words of farewell could have been gathered into 
one great assembly, with suitable surroundings, the 
impression would have been intensified. That this 
immense body of people could be separated into 
two audiences, uncomfortably seated in bare and 
uninviting halls, to listen half of them to speeches 
already once delivered to the other half, without 
any diminution of enthusiasm, witnesses the great- 
ness of the occasion. 

It was early apparent that Columbus Hall would 
not accommodate half the people who desired to 
attend the- closing exercises, and tickets were accord- 
ingly issued for an overflow meeting in Washington 
Hall, which the writer of this review and the Rev. 
Jenkins L. Jones were asked to conduct. Both 
halls were filled to their utmost capacity. In the 
president's reception-room were assembled the rep- 
resentatives of the oriental religions and the creeds 
of Christendom, Buddhist and Baptist, Mohamme- 

(293) 



294 woeld's eeligious congresses. 

dan and Methodist, Catholic and Confucian, Mono- 
theist, Polytheist, and Pantheist, Episcopalian, 
Evangelical, and Evolutionist, Orthodox and Heter- 
odox, the New Dispensation in India, and the New 
Dispensation in Christendom — all forms and colors 
of faith, and varied cut and color of vestment, min- 
gling together in happy fellowship. It was manifest 
that the interest expectant in both the halls was 
only to be satisfied by both seeing and hearing; and 
we who were to be responsible for the overflow 
meeting confronted a problem of no small difficulty. 

It was arranged that the procession of guests and 
speakers should form and march first to the plat- 
form of Washington Hall, there to group and stand 
while introduced by Doctor Barrows, with the prom- 
ise that when each had spoken in Columbus Hall 
he should be escorted to that platform and repeat 
his words to that audience. And it was agreed 
between Mr. Jones and myself that we would alter- 
nately escort the speakers in the order of their pres- 
entation to the other audience, and introduce them 
to the assembly in Washington Hall. This pro- 
gramme was fully carried out, with the happiest 
results. 

As the company of guests arranged themselves 
on the platform of Columbus Hall the Apollo Club, 
under the leadership of Professor Tomlins, opened 
with "Lift up your heads, O ye gates!" Then at 
the invitation of President Bonney the assembly 
stood in silent prayer. After which Cardinal New- 
man's hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light!" was sung by 
the chorus. 



FAREWELL MEETINGS. 295 

"The demands of the occasion," said President 
Bonney, "require the utmost possible economy of 
our time. We shall endeavor to present during the 
evening a large number of brief speeches rather 
than a few long ones. Doctor Barrows will now pre- 
sent some of the distinguished guests whom we 
have entertained during the past three weeks, and 
who have taken such an active part in the World's 
Parliament of Religions." 

Meanwhile in Washington Hall the audience was 
entertained by a brief catholic and inspiring 
paper on the c ' Future of Religion ' ' by Merwin 
Marie Snell, who had rendered valuable service in 
the. conduct of the scientific section during the ses- 
sions of the parliament. At the close of his 
address, and while Doctor Momerie was speaking in 
the Hall of Columbus, it fell to my lot to say the 
few words I had been appointed to say. The 
audience was put into the best of spirits by the 
evident purpose to compensate them for the dis- 
appointment in being barred from the first table, as 
it were, and received with evident approval the 
suggestion that the results of this parliament 
would be not less religion but more, not vagueness 
as to origins but greater definiteness of faith. 

"One of the lessons of the parliament is that not 
doctrine alone but life according to doctrine con- 
stitutes and qualifies religion. Wherever there is 
any religion there are two parties to constitute it, 
God and man; for there must be conjunction 
between them. And there are two means to this 
conjunction: the life of divine love which flows in 



296 

inwardly with all men, and the truths of faith 
which are provided in some form, in more or less 
f ullness, with every nation that has a religion. So 
far as any one in any religion yields his heart to 
live according to the truths of faith taught in his 
religion, the Lord, the true and only God, conjoins 
the good of life. And as good and truth, faith and 
life are united in man, he comes into harmony 
with the stream of God' s providence, and is capable 
of enlightenment and development of life under 
favoring conditions in this world and the next. 

"Every religion teaches that there is a God, and 
that evils are to be shunned as sins against him; 
and in almost every religion there is witness in 
some form to the life after death, with its condi- 
tions that flow from the life here, as lived in 
acknowledgment of God and obedience to his pre- 
cepts. The vitality of religion everywhere is in the 
fidelity of life to belief. And the supreme good of 
this parliament is the emphasis it has given to that 
one truth. The fatherhood of God and the brother- 
hood of man without that truth would mean noth- 
ing, for brotherhood in religion flows from that 
common fountain, fidelity to what one believes 
from God. That is my best, and that in every other 
man is brother to that best in me. It is this recog- 
nition which exalts the importance of the scriptures 
and traditions in which the non-Christian religions 
are founded, and constitutes the appeal of the 
Christian Scriptures to them, as lighting up their 
own origins, and giving expansion and validity to 
their conception of God and righteousness. He is 



FAREWELL MEETINGS. 297 

in the way of eternal life who lives up to his belief 
in God and his law; not by this or that doctrine, but 
by ' what is written in the law? How readest thou? 
This do and thou shalt live.' The emphasis and 
illustration which has been given to this funda- 
mental truth in the Parliament of Religions can not 
but issue in permanent and happy results ' ' And 
as Doctor Momerie entered at this point, reminding 
me of Frederick Robertson of Brighton, I could call 
him to witness to that great preacher's prophecy of 
the recognition sometime of the importance of this 
truth — not that it makes no difference what we 
believe, but, as Robertson said, "Obedience is the 
organ of spiritual enlightenment." 

Doctor Momerie was introduced by the Rev. Mr. 
Jones, w T ith happy reference to our satisfaction in 
his visit and contribution to the work of the con- 
gress, almost leading us to forget the disappoint- 
ment at the unfortunate failure of the Anglican 
church to be officially represented. 

Doctor Momerie responded that he wished to say 
three things. "First of all, I want to tender my 
warmest congratulations to Doctor Barrows. I do 
not believe there is another man living who could 
have carried this congress through and made it such 
a gigantic success. It needed a head, a heart, an 
energy, a common sense, and a pluck such as I have 
never known to be united before in a single indi- 
vidual. 

"Secondly, I should like to offer my congratula- 
tions to the American people. This Parliament of 
Religions has been held in the New World. I confess 



298 world's eeligious congeesses. 

I wish it liad been held in the Old World, in my own 
country, and that it had had its origin in my own 
church. It is the greatest event so far in the history 
of the world, and it has been held on American soil. 
I congratulate the people of America. Their exam- 
ple will be followed in time to come in other coun- 
tries and by other peoples, but there is one honor 
which will always be America's — the honor of hav- 
ing led the way. And certainly I should like to offer 
my congratulations to you, the citizens of Chicago. 
While our minds are full of the parliament I can 
not forget the Fair. I have seen all the expositions 
of Europe during the last ten or twelve years, and I 
am sure I do not exaggerate when I say that your 
exposition is greater than all the rest put together. 
But your Parliament of Religions is far greater than 
your exposition. There have been plenty of expo- 
sitions before. Yours is the best, but it is a compar- 
atively common thing. The Parliament of Religions 
is a new thing in the world. Most people, even 
those who regarded the idea with pleasure, thought 
that it was an impossibility; but it has been 
achieved. Here in this Hall of Columbus vast 
audiences have assembled day after day, the mem- 
bers of which came from all churches and from all 
sects, and sometimes from no church at all. Here 
they sat side by side during the long hours of the 
day, listening to doctrines which they had been 
taught to regard with contempt; listening with 
respect, with sympathy, with an earnest desire to 
learn something which would improve their own 
doctrines." And with a reference to the harmony 



FAREWELL MEETINGS. 299 

among the representatives of churches and sects 
which once hated and cursed one another, he closed 
with congratulation and benediction for Chicago. 

Returning from Columbus Hall with Mr. Mozoom- 
dar, where his speech had been received with the 
enthusiasm he never fails to arouse, it was evident 
that the second audience was not likely to prove a 
burden to the speakers. There was such a good- 
humored cordiality and informal sphere pervading 
Washington Hall that the speakers seemed to feel 
a certain lightness of spirit and freedom of address 
which made the re|)etition of the speech just 
delivered to the other audience a gracious pleasure. 
In presenting Mr. Mozoomdar, I could not but refer 
again to the phrase descriptive of the mission 
Brahmo-Somaj, namely, "The New Dispensation in 
India," to which his quotation from their great 
leader, Chunder Senn, in the address which follows, 
gives peculiar significance: He said: 

' ' This Parliament of Religions, this concourse of 
spirits, is to break up before to-morrow's sun. 
What lessons have we learned from our incessant 
labors? Firstly, the charge of materialism, laid 
against the age in general, and against America in 
particular, is refuted forever. Could these myriads 
have spent their time, their energy, neglected 
their business, their pleasures, to be present with 
us if their spirit had not risen above their 
material needs or carnal desires? The spirit 
dominates still over matter and over mankind. 
Secondly, the unity of i>urpose and feeling un- 
mistakably shown in the harmonious proceedings 



300 

of these seventeen days teaches that men with 
opposite views, denominations with contradictory 
principles and histories, can form one congregation, 
one household, one body, for however short a time, 
when animated by one Spirit. Who is or what is 
that Spirit ? It is the Spirit of God himself. This 
unity of man with man is the unity of man with 
G-od, and the unity of man with man in Grod is the 
kingdom of heaven. When I came here by the invi- 
tation of your President, I came with the hope 
of seeing the object of my lifelong faith and labors, 
viz., the harmony of religions, effected. The last 
public utterance of my leader, Cheshub Chunder 
Senn, made in 1883, in his lecture called ' Asia' s 
Message to Europe,' was this: 

' ' ' Here will meet the world' s representatives, the 
foremost spirits, the most living hearts, the leading- 
thinkers and devotees of each church, and offer 
united homage to the 'King of kings and the 
Lord of lords. This central union church is no 
Utopian fancy, but a veritable reality, whose begin- 
ning we see already among the nations of the earth. 
Already the right wing of each church is pressing 
forward, and the advanced liberals are drawing near 
each other under the central banner of the new dis- 
pensation. Believe me, the time is coming when the 
more liberal of the Catholic and Protestant branches 
of "Christ's church will advance and meet upon a com- 
mon platform and form a broad Christian commu- 
nity, in which all shall be identified, in spite of all 
diversities and differences in non-essential matters 
of faith. So shall the Baptists and Methodists, 



FAREWELL MEETINGS. 301 

Trinitarians and Unitarians, the Ritualists and the 
Evangelical, all unite in a broad and universal church 
organization, loving, honoring, serving the common 
body while retaining the peculiarities of each sect. 
Only the broad of each sect shall for the present 
come forward, and others shall follow in time. 
The base remains where it is; the vast masses at 
the foot of each church will yet remain, perhaps 
for centuries, where they now are. But as you look 
to the lofty heights above you will see all the bolder 
spirits and broad souls of each church pressing 
forward, onward, heavenward. Come, then, my 
friends, ye broad-hearted of all the churches, ad- 
vance and shake hands with each other and promote 
that spiritual fellowship, that kingdom of heaven 
which Christ predicted.' 

"These words were said in 1883, and in 1893 every 
letter of the prophecy has been fulfilled. The king- 
dom of heaven is to my mind a vast concentric cir- 
cle with various circumferences of doctrine, author- 
ities, and organizations from outer to inner, from 
inner to inner still, until heaven and earth become 
one. The outermost circle is belief in God and the 
love of man. In the tolerance, kindliness, good- 
will, patience, and wisdom which have distinguished 
the work of this parliament that outermost circle of 
the kingdom of heaven has been described. We 
have influenced vast numbers of men and women of 
all opinions and the influence will spread and spread. 
So many human unities drawn within the magnetic 
circle of spiritual sympathy can not but influence 
and widen the various denominations to which they 



302 world's religious congresses. 

belong. In the course of time those inner circles 
must widen also till the love of man and the love of 
God are perfected in one church, one God, one sal- 
vation. I conclude with acknowledging the singular 
cordiality and appreciation extended to us orientals. 
Where every one has done so well we did not 
deserve special honor, but undeserved as the honor 
may be, it shows the greatness of your leaders, and 
especially of your chairman, Doctor Barrows. 
Doctor Barrows, humanly speaking, has been the 
soul of this noble movement. The profoundest 
blessings of the present and future generations shall 
follow him. And now farewell. For once in his- 
tory all religions have made their peace, all nations 
have called each other brothers, and their repre- 
sentatives have for seventeen days stood up morning 
after morning to pray Our Father, the universal 
father of all, in heaven. His will has been done so 
far, and in the great coming future may that blessed 
will be done further and further, forever and ever. ' ' 

Without further attempt to describe two meetings, 
we may go on in the order of the second, with which 
the writer is most familiar. Prince Serge Wolkon- 
sky, who endeared himself to everybody by his 
enthusiasm for humanity, was next felicitously 
introduced by Hev. Mr. Jones, and responded in 
the following characteristic speech: 

' ; I hardly realize that it is for the last time in my 
life I have the honor, the pleasure, the fortune to 
speak to you. On this occasion I would like to tell 
you so many things that I am afraid that if I give 



FAREWELL MEETINGS. 303 

free course to my sentiments I will feel the delicate 
but imperative touch of Mr. President's hand on my 
shoulder long before I reach the end of my speech. 
Therefore, I will say thanks to all of you ladies and 
gentlemen in the shortest possible words — thanks 
for your kind attention, for your kind applause, 
your kind laughter, for your hearty hand-shakes. 
You will believe how deeply I am obliged to you 
when I tell you that this was the first time in my 
life that I ever took an active part in a congress, 
and I wish any enterprise I might undertake later 
on might leave me such happy remembrances as 
this first experience. 

"Before bidding you farewell, I want to express a 
wish; may the good feelings you have shown me so 
many times, may they, through my unworthy per- 
sonality, spread to the people of my country, whom 
you know so little and whom I love so much. If I 
ask you that, it is because I know the prejudices 
which prevail among the people of your country. 
A compatriot said the other day that Russians 
thought all Americans were angels, and that Ameri- 
cans thought all Russians were brutes. Now once 
in awhile these angels and these brutes come 
together, and both are deceived in their expectations. 
You see that you certainly are not angels, and you 
see we are not quite as much brute as you thought 
we were. Now why this disappointment? Why this 
surprise? Why this astonishment? Because we 
won't remember that we are men, and nothing else 
and nothing more. We can not be anything more, 
for to be a man is the highest thing we can pretend 



304 world's religious congresses. 

to be on this earth. I do not know whether many- 
have learned in the sessions of this parliament what 
respect of God is, but I know that no one will leave 
the congress without having learned what respect of 
man is. And should the Parliament of Religions of 
1893 have no other result but this, it is enough to 
make the names of Doctor Barrows and those who 
have helped him imperishable in the history of 
humanity. 

" Should this congress have no other result than 
to teach us to judge our fellow-man by his individ- 
ual value, and not by the political opinion he may 
have of his country, I will express my gratitude to 
the congress, not only in the name of those your 
brothers who are my countrymen, but in the name 
of those our brothers whom we so often revile 
because the political traditions of their country 
refuse the recognition of home rule; in the name 
of those our fellow-men whose mother-land stands 
on the neck of India, in the name of those our 
brothers whom we so often blame only because the 
governments of their countries send rarjacious 
armies on the western, southern, and eastern coasts 
of Africa ; I will express my gratitude to the con- 
gress in the name of those my brothers whom we 
often judge so wrongly because of the cruel treat- 
ment their government inflicts upon the Chinese. I 
will congratulate the congress in the name of the 
whole world if those who have been here have 
learned that as long as politics and politicians exist 
there is no happiness possible on earth. I will con- 
gratulate the congress in the name of the whole 



FAREWELL MEETINGS. 305 

humanity if those who have attended its sessions have 
realized that it is a crime to be astonished when we 
see that another human being is a man like our- 
selves." And in concluding he paid a tribute of 
respect and praise to Mr. Bonney for his unfailing 
courtesy and charity. 

Mr. Hirai of Japan, who was one of the first to 
tell Christians some things they ought to know 
about the wrongs of so-called Christian civilization, 
had only words of good- will in farewell. 

"We can not but admire the tolerant forbear- 
ance and compassion of the people of the civilized 
west. You are the pioneers in human history. 
You have achieved an assembly of the world's 
religions, and we believe your next step will be 
toward the ideal goal of this parliament, the realiza- 
tion of international justice. We ourselves desire 
to witness its fulfillment in our lifetime and to greet 
you again with our deepest admiration. By your 
kind hospitality we have forgotten that we are 
strangers, and we are very much attached to this 
city. To leave here makes us feel as if we were 
leaving our native country. To part with you 
makes us feel as if we were parting from our own 
sisters and brothers. When we think of our home- 
ward journey we can not help shedding tears. 
Farewell. The cold winter is coming, and we 
earnestly wish that you may be in good health. 
Farewell," 



The kindly and gentle appeal in the speech of the 
20 



306 woeld's eeligious congeesses. 

Chinese ambassador Pung Quang Yu is also some- 
thing of a reproach to Christian America. After 
formal thanks, he said: 

" It is unnecessary for me to touch upon the exist- 
ing relations between the government of China and 
that of the United States. There is no doubt that 
the Chinese minister at Washington and the honor- 
able Secretary of State are well able to deal with 
every question rising between the two countries in a 
manner satisfactory and honorable to both. As I 
am a delegate to the religious congresses, I can not 
but feel that all religious people are my friends. I 
have a favor to ask of all the religious people of 
America, and that is that they will treat, hereafter, 
all my countrymen just as they have treated me. I 
shall be a hundred times more grateful to them for 
the kind treatment of my countrymen than of 
myself. I am sure that the Americans in China 
receive just such considerate treatment from the 
cultured people of China as I have received from 
you. The majority of my countrymen in this coun- 
try are honest and law-abiding. Christ teaches us 
that it is not enough to love one' s brethren only. I 
am sure that all religious people will not think this 
request too extravagant. It is my sincere hope 
that no national differences will ever interrupt the 
friendly relations between the two governments and 
that the two peoples will equally enjoy the protec- 
tion and blessings of heaven. I intend to leave this 
country shortly. I shall take great pleasure in 
reporting to my government the proceedings of this 
parliament upon my return. With this I desire to 
bid all my friends farewell." 



FABEWELL MEETINGS. 307 

The high priest of the Shinto sect, of Japan, while 
invoking eight million deities, expressed the spirit 
of brotherhood which carries with it the acknowl- 
edgment of a supreme Father. 

' ' I am here in the pulpit again to express my thanks 
for the kindness, hearty welcome, and applause I 
have been enjoying at your hands ever since I came 
here to Chicago. You have shown great sympathy 
with my humble opinion, and your newspaper men 
have talked of me in high terms. I am happy that 
I have had the honor of listening to so many famous 
scholars and preaching the same opinion of the 
necessity of universal brotherhood and humanity. 
I am deeply impressed with the peace, politeness, 
and education which characterize your audiences. 
But is it not too sad that such pleasures are always 
short-lived % I, who made acquaintance with you 
only yesterday, have to part with you to-day, 
though reluctantly. This Parliament of Religions is 
the most remarkable event in history, and it is the 
first honor in my life to have the privilege of appear- 
ing before you to^pour out my humble idea, which 
was so well accepted by you all. You like me, but 
I think it is not the mortal Shibata that you like, 
but you like the immortal idea of universal broth- 
erhood. What I wish to do is to assist you in car- 
rying out the plan of forming universal brotherhood 
under the one roof of truth. You know unity is 
power. I, who can speak no language but Japanese, 
may help you in crowning that grand project with 
success. To come here I had many obstacles to 
overcome, many struggles to make. You must not 



308 world's religious congresses. 

think I represent all Shintoism. I only represent my 
own Shinto sect. But who dares to destroy univer- 
sal fraternity? So long as the sun and moon con- 
tinue to shine all friends of truth must be willing 
to fight courageously for this great principle. I do 
not know as I shall ever see you again in this life, 
but our souls have been so pleasantly united here 
that I hope they may be again united in the life 
hereafter. Now I pray that 8,000,000 deities pro- 
tecting the beautiful cherry-tree country of Japan 
may protect you and your government forever, and 
with this I bid you good- by." 

The Rev. Dr. George T. Candlin, who is a Chris- 
tian missionary to China, who showed his faith on 
several occasions that God has not left himself with- 
out a witness in any nation, and that the mission of 
Christianity is to educate rather than subdue, said: 

"It is with deepest joy that I take my part in 
the congratulations of this closing day. The par- 
liament has more than justified my most sanguine 
expectations. As a missionary I. anticipate that it 
will make a new era of missionary enterprise and 
missionary hope. If it does not it will not be your 
fault, and let those take the blame who make it 
otherwise. Very sure I am that at least one mis- 
sionary, who counts himself the humblest member 
of this noble assembly, will carry through every 
day of work, through every hour of effort on till 
the sun of life sets on the completion of his task, 
the strengthening memory and uplifting inspira- 
tion of this Pentecost. By this parliament the city 



FABEWELL MEETINGS. 309 

of Chicago has i;)laced herself far away above all 
the cities of the earth. In this school you have 
learned what no other town or city in the world yet 
knows. The conventional idea of religion which 
obtains among Christians the world over is that 
Christianity is true, all other religions false; that 
Christianity is of God, while other religions are of 
the devil; or else, with a little spice of moderation, 
that Christianity is a revelation from heaven, while 
other religions are manuf act ares of men. You 
know better, and with clear light and strong assur- 
ance can testify that there may be friendship 
instead of antagonism between religion and religion; 
that so surely as God is our common Father, our 
hearts alike have yearned for him and our souls in 
devoutest moods have caught whispers of grace 
dropped from his throne. Then this is Pentecost, 
and behind is the conversion of the world." 

There is diversity of gifts, and one differs from 
another in fitness and function as well as in glory. 
This was sure to be realized in introducing him, by 
one who had become really acquainted with the 
loving, the lovable, and love-inspiring Dharmapala. 
He responded: 

"Peace, blessings, and salutations, brethren. 
This congress of religions has achieved a stupendous 
work in bringing before you the representatives of 
the religions and philosophies of the East. The 
committee on religious congresses has realized the 
Utopian idea of the poet and the visionary. By 
the wonderful genius of two men — Mr. Bonney 



310 world's religious congresses. 

and Doctor Barrows — a beacon-light has been 
erected on the platform of the Chicago Parliament 
of Religions to guide the yearning souls after truth. 

"I, on behalf of the 475,000,000 of my corelig- 
ionists, followers of the gentle Lord Buddha Gau- 
tama, tender my affectionate regards to you and to 
Dr. John Henry Barrows, a man of noble tolerance, 
of sweet disposition, whose equal I could hardly 
find. And you, my brothers and sisters, born in 
this land of freedom, you have learned from your 
brothers of the far East their presentation of the 
respective religious systems they follow. You have 
listened with commendable patience to the teach- 
ings of the all merciful Buddha through his humble 
followers. During his earthly career of forty-five 
years he labored in emancipating the human mind 
from religious prejudices, and teaching a doctrine 
which has made Asia mild. By the patient and 
laborious researches of the men of science you are 
given to enjoy the fruits of material civilization, but 
this civilization by itself finds no praise at the 
hands of the great naturalists of the day. 

"Learn to think without prejudice, love all 
beings for love's sake, express your convictions 
fearlessly, lead a life of purity, and the sunlight of 
truth will illuminate you. If theology and dogma 
stand in your way in search of truth, put them 
aside. Be earnest and work out your own salvation 
with diligence, and the fruits of holiness will be 
yours." 

The Yedas, they say, have no beginning and no 



FAREWELL MEETINGS. 311 

end, and that is because their streams flow from the 
eternal fountain of the water of life. ' ' There is a 
river th*e streams whereof make glad the city of our 
God," and in every land waters of instruction and 
refreshment are provided and preserved for those who 
are there, by a providence which embraces them as 
truly as the most favored. Something of this faith, 
uttered in the introduction of Swami Vivekananda, 
was justified in his own words. 

"The World's Parliament of Religions has be- 
come an accomplished fact, and the merciful Father 
has helped those who labored to bring it into exist- 
ence and crowned with success their most unselfish 
labor. My thanks to those noble souls whose large 
hearts and love of truth first dreamed this wonder- 
ful dream and then realized it. My thanks to the 
shower of liberal sentiments that has overflowed this 
platform. My thanks to this enlightened audience 
for their uniform kindness to me and for their 
appreciation of every thought that tends to smooth 
the friction of religions. A few jarring notes were 
heard from time to time in this harmony. My 
special thanks to them, for they have by their strik- 
ing contrast made the general harmony the sweeter. 
Much has been said of the common ground of 
religious unity. I am not going just now to venture 
my own theory; but if any one here hopes that this 
unity would come by the triumph of any one of 
these religions and the destruction of the others, 
to him I say: ' Brother, yours is an impossible 
hope.' Do I wish that the Christian would become 
Hindu? God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu 



312 world's religious congresses. 

or Buddhist would become Christian? God forbid. 
The seed is put in the ground, and earth, and air, 
and water are placed around it. Does the seed 
become the earth, or the air, or the water? No. It 
becomes a plant, it develops after the law of its own 
growth, assimilates the air, the earth, and the water, 
converts them into plant substance and grows a 
plant. Similar is the case with religion. The 
Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, 
nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. 
But each must assimilate the others and yet pre- 
serve its individuality and grow according to its own 
law of growth. If the Parliament of Religions has 
shown anything to the world it is this: It has 
proved to the world that holiness, purity, and 
charity are not the exclusive possessions of any 
church in the world and that every system has pro- 
duced men and women of the most exalted charac- 
ter. In the face of this evidence if anybody dreams 
of the exclusive survival of his own and the destruc- 
tion of the others I pity him from the bottom of my 
heart, and point out to him that upon the banner of 
every religion would soon be written, in spite of 
their resistance: 'Help and not light,' 'Assimila- 
tion and not destruction,' ' Harmony and peace and 
not dissension.' " 

A quiet lawyer of Bombay, secretary and repre- 
sentative of the Jain Association, a form of religion 
he declared older than Buddhism, Mr. Grhandi, won 
many friends, to whom he said in parting: 

"Are we not all sorry that we are parting so 



FAREWELL MEETINGS. 313 

soon % Do we not wish that this parliament would 
last seventeen times seventeen days % Have we not 
heard with pleasure and interest the speeches of the 
learned representatives on this platform \ Do we 
not see that the sublime dream of the organizers of 
this unique parliament have been more than real- 
ized % If you will only permit a heathen to deliver 
his message of peace and love I shall only ask you 
to look at the multifarious ideas jjresented to you in 
a liberal spirit, and not with superstition and 
bigotry, as the seven blind men did in the elephant 
story. Once upon a time in a great city an elephant 
was brought with a circus. The people had never 
seen an elephant before. There were seven blind 
men in the city who longed to know what kind of 
animal it was, so they went together to the place 
where the elephant was kept. One of them placed 
his hands on the ears, another on the legs, a third 
on the tail of the elephant, and so on. When they 
were asked by the people what kind of an animal the 
elephant was, one of the blind men said: 'Oh, to 
be sure, the elephant is like a big winnowing fan.' 
Another blind man said: 'No, my dear sir, you 
are wrong. The elephant is more like a big round 
post.' The third: 'You are quite mistaken, it is 
like a tapering stick.' The rest of them gave also 
their different opinions. The proprietor of the cir- 
cus stepped forward and said: ' My friends, you are 
all mistaken. You have not examined the elephant 
from all sides. Had you done so you would not 
have' taken one-sided views.' Brothers and sisters, 
I entreat you to hear the moral of this story, and 



314 world's religious congresses. 

learn to examine the various religious systems from 
all standpoints. 

"I now thank you from the bottom of my heart 
for the kindness with which you have received us 
and for the liberal spirit and patience with which 
you have heard us." 

Prince Momolu Massaquoi, of the Vey Nation, 
West Africa, is a Christian convert, educated in 
Liberia and in this country; but his heart is near 
his people, and on many occasions he testified to the 
reality of their religion and soundness of their mo- 
rality, both the Mohammedans and pagans among 
them. He did not appear before the parliament in 
any formal address, though he spoke in the subor- 
dinate congresses, winning all with his dignified 
and simple bearing and unaffected grace of speech. 
Presented as a rej)resentative of Africa, he referred 
to the receptive and teachable character of the 
African, to his affectionate disposition and suscepti- 
bility to supernatural influences and guidance, and 
said: 

' ' Permit me to express my hearty thanks to the 
chairman of this congress for the honor conferred 
upon me personally by the privilege of rejjresent- 
ing Africa in this World's Parliament of Religions. 
There is an important relationship which Africa 
sustains to this particular gathering. Nearly 1,900 
years ago, at the great dawn of the Christian morn- 
ing, the world saw benighted Africa opening her 
doors to the infant Saviour Jesus Christ, afterward 
the founder of one of the greatest religions man ever 



FAREWELL MEETINGS. 315 

embraced, and the teacher of the highest and noblest 
sentiments ever taught, whose teaching has resulted 
in the presence of this magnificent audience. As I 
sat in this audience listening to the distinguished 
delegates and representatives in this assembly of 
learning, of philosophy, of systems of religions, I 
said to myself : ' What shall the harvest be % ' 

"The very atmosphere seems pregnant with an 
indefinable, inexpressible something — something 
too solemn for human utterance — something I dare 
not express. Previous to this gathering the greatest 
enmity existed among the world's religions. To- 
night — I dare not speak as one seeing visions or 
dreaming dreams — but this night it seems that the 
world's religions, instead of striking one against 
another, have come together in amicable delibera- 
tion and have created a lasting and congenial spirit 
among themselves. May the coming together of 
these wise men result in the full realization of the 
general parliament of God, the brotherhood of man, 
and the consecration of souls to the service of God." 

At this point in the programme occurred a scene 
in Columbus Hall in which the audience in Washing- 
ton Hall could not participate. Doctor Barrows 
referred to President Bonney as the one to whom the 
marvelous success of the xoarliament was due, where- 
upon the vast audience arose as by a single impulse 
and gave the Chautauqua salute with enthusiasm. 

Mr. Bonney stood for a moment, after the enthu- 
siasm subsided, almost overcome with emotion, and 
then said: "Not unto us, not unto us, but unto 



316 world's religious congresses. 

thy name give glory — to the God that inspired this 
movement and has guided and aided it by his bless- 
ing, through a multitude of the best men and 
women in the world under the leadership of Doctor 
Barrows." The Apollo Club then sang the Halle- 
lujah Chorus. Its repetition was demanded, and 
President Bonney remarked that it was most fitting; 
it had never been given on a more appropriate occa- 
sion, though it probably never entered the thought 
of the gifted composer that such an occasion as the 
present could arise. While it was being sung the 
second time the Rev. Dr. George Dana Boardman of 
Philadelphia was introduced in Washington Hall, 
and delivered this remarkable and effective witness: 
"Fathers of the contemplative East, sons of the 
executive West, behold how good and how pleasant 
it is for brethren to dwell together in. unity. The 
New Jerusalem, the city of God, is descending, 
heaven and earth chanting the eternal hallelujah 
chorus. " 

Brief speeches from American representatives fol- 
lowed, from which we select passages as showing 
their estimate of the event. 

Dr. Emil Hirsch said: "None could appreciate 
the deeper significance of this parliament more fully 
than we, the heirs of a past spanning the millenia, 
and the motive of whose achievements and fortitude 
was and is the confident hope of the ultimate break 
of the millennium. Millions of my co-religionists 
hoped that this convocation of this modern great 
synagogue would sound the death-knell of hatred 



FAREWELL MEETINGS. 317 

and prejudice under which they have pined and are 
still suffering, and their hope has not been disap- 
pointed. Of old, Palestine's hills were every month 
aglow with fire-brands announcing the rise of a new 
month. So here were kindled the cheering fires tell- 
ing the whole world that a new period of time had 
been consecrated. We Jews came hither to give 
and to receive. For wLat little we could bring we 
have been richly rewarded in the precious things we 
have received in turn. According to an old rabbin- 
ical practice, friends among us never part without 
first discussing some problem of religious life. Our 
whole parliament has been devoted to such discus- 
sion, and we take hence, with us in parting, the 
richest treasures of religious instruction ever laid 
before man. Thus the old Talmud ic promise will 
be verified in us, that when even three come to- 
gether to study God's law his Shekhinah abides 
with them." 

Dr. Frank Bristol, beginning with a stanza 
from Burns' " Shall brithers be for a' that," said: 
"Good, and only good, will come from this parlia- 
ment. To all who have come from afar we are 
profoundly and eternally indebted. Some of them 
represent civilization that was old when Romulus 
was founding Rome, whose philosophies and songs 
were ripe in wisdom and rich in rhythm before 
Homer sang his Iliad to the Greeks, and they have 
enlarged our ideas of our common humanity. They 
have brought to us fragrant flowers from the gar- 
dens of Eastern faiths, rich gems from the old mines 
of great philosophies, and we are richer to-night 



318 world's religious congresses. 

from their contributions of thought, and particu- 
larly from our contact with them in spirit. Never 
was there such a bright and hopeful day for our 
common humanity along the lines of tolerance and 
universal brotherhood. And we shall find that by 
the words that these visitors have brought to us, 
and by the influence they have exerted, they will be 
richly rewarded in the consciousness of having con- 
tributed to the mighty movement which holds in 
itself the promise of one faith, one Lord, one Father, 
one brotherhood. A distinguished writer has said 
it is always morn somewhere in the world. The 
time hastens when a greater thing will be said: 'Tis 
always morn everywhere in the world. The dark- 
ness has passed, the day is at hand, and with it will 
come the greater humanity, the universal brother- 
hood.' " 

The Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones bade "the parting 
guests the godspeed that comes out of a soul that 
is glad to recognize its kinship with all lands and 
with all religions; and when you go, you go, not 
only leaving behind you in our hearts more hospit- 
able thoughts for the faiths you represent, but also 
warm and loving ties that bind you into the union 
that will be our joy and our life f orevermore. " And 
referring to an intended motion for a second parlia- 
ment of religions, he continued: "At first I thought 
that Bombay might be a good place, or Calcutta a 
better place, but I have concluded to move that the 
next parliament of religions be held on the sacred 
banks of the Ganges, in the ancient new city of 



FABEWELL MEETINGS. 319 

Benares, where we can visit these brethren at their 
noblest headquarters. And when we go there we 
will do as they have done, leaving our heavy bag- 
gage behind, going in light marching order, carry- 
ing only the working principles that are applicable 
in all lands." 

Mrs. Henrotin, always working, never hurried, 
giving to every preparation that womanly touch 
needed to quiet anxiety and stimulate courage, bore 
her testimony to the earnest and harmonious work 
of the committees of women, and to its worth, 
especially in connection with the denominational 
congresses, quoted above. And Miss Chapin fol- 
lowed: 

' ' We have heard," she said, ' ' of the fatherhood of 
God, the brotherhood of man, and the solidarity of 
the human race, until these great words and truths 
have penetrated our minds and sunken into our 
hearts as never before. They will henceforth have 
larger meaning. No one of us all but has been 
intellectually strengthened and spiritually uplifted. 
We have been sitting together upon the mountain 
of the Lord. We shall never descend to the lower 
places where our feet have sometimes trod in times 
past. I have tried, as I have listened to these 
masterly addresses, to imagine what effect this 
comparative study of religions would have upon the 
religious world and upon individual souls that 
come directly under the sweep of its influence. It 
is not too much to hope that a great impulse has 



320 world's religious congresses. 

been given to the cause of religious unity, and to 
pure and undefiled religion in all lands." 

Bishop Arnett, of the African Methodist Episco- 
pal church, always popular, always frank and genial; 
said many good things, but nothing better than this: 
' ' The ten commandments, the sermon on the mount, 
and the golden rule have not been superseded by 
any that have been presented by the various teachers 
of religion and philosophy, but our mountai -~*° 
just as high and our doctrines are just as 3 
before our meeting, and every man and wo 
been confirmed in the faith once delivered 
saints. Another good of this convention: 
taught us a lesson that while we have truth 
side we have not had all the truth; while w 
had theory we have not had all the prac 
the strongest criticism we have received wa^ 
to our doctrines or methods, but as to our pi^, 
not being in harmony with our own teachings anc 
with our own doctrines." 

Bishop Keane made a characteristic address, 
asserting the primitive unity of religion and appea, 
ing for a restored unity; and then Mr. Bonney said: 
"In the midst of all these representatives of the 
various faiths and churches sits a Presbyterian mir 
ister who has performed one of the greatest oiuoes 
ever committed to the hand of man — the unifica- 
tion of the world in the things of religion. Y 
man now comes to say his closing words to 
World's Parliament of Religions, and I have one 



wome 
Ou; 

tii 

us 

tl 






HON. PUNG QUANG YU, 

Secretary of Chinese Legation. 



FAREWELL MEETINGS. 321 

honor to present Rev. Dr. John Henry Barrows, 
chairman of the general committee." When the 
ovation which followed had subsided he spoke as 
follows: 

"The closing hour of this parliament is one of 
congratulation, of tender sorrow, of triumphant 
hopefulness. God has been better to us by far than 
our fears, and no one has more occasion for grati- 
tude than your chairman, that he has been upheld 
and comforted by your cordial cooperation, by the 
prayers of a great host of God's noblest men and 
women, and by the consciousness of divine favor. 
Our hopes have been more than realized. The sen- 
timent which has inspired this parliament has held 
us together. The principles in accord with which 
this historic convention has proceeded have been 
put to the test, and even strained at times, but they 
have not been inadequate. Toleration, brotherly 
kindness, trust in each other's sincerity, a candid 
and earnest seeking after the unities of religion, the 
honest purpose of each to set forth his own faith 
without compromise and without unfriendly criti- 
cism — these principles, thanks to your loyalty and 
courage, have not been found wanting. 

"I thank God for these friendships which we 
have knit with men and women beyond the sea, and 
I thank you for your sympathy and over-generous 
appreciation, and for the constant help which you 
have furnished in the midst of my multiplied duties. 
Christian America sends her greetings through you 
to all mankind. We cherish a broadened sympa- 
thy, a higher respect, a truer tenderness to the 
21 



world's religious congresses. 

children of our common father in all lands, and, as 
the story of this parliament is read in the cloisters 
of Japan, by the rivers of Southern Asia, amid the 
universities of Europe, and in the isles of all the 
seas, it is my prayer that non-Christian readers 
may, in some measure, discover what has been the 
source and strength of that faith in divine father- 
hood and human brotherhood which, embodied in an 
Asiatic peasant who was the Son of God, and made 
divinely potent through him, is clasping the globe 
with bands of heavenly light. Most that is in my 
heart of love, and gratitude, and happy memory 
must go unsaid. If any honor is due for this mag- 
nificent achievement, let it be given to the spirit of 
Christ, which is the spirit of love in the hearts of 
those of many lands and faiths who have toiled for 
the high ends of this great meeting. May the bless- 
ing of him w T ho rules the storm and holds the ocean 
waves in his right hand follow you, with the pray- 
ers of all God' s people, to your distant homes. And 
as Sir Joshua Reynolds closed his lectures on ' The 
Art of Painting' with the name of Michael Angelo, 
so, with a deeper reverence, I desire that the last 
words which I speak to this parliament shall be the 
name of him to whom I owe life, and truth, and 
hope, and all things, who reconciles all contradic- 
tions, pacifies all antagonisms, and who, from the 
throne of his heavenly kingdom, directs the serene 
and unwearied omnipotence of redeeming love — 
Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world." 

At the close of Doctor Barrows' address, Mr. 



FAKEWELL MEETINGS. 323 

Bonney, who from first to last had shown such 
appreciation of everybody, and such felicitous sense 
of the fitting thing to be said in the opening, and 
encouragement of the parliament and every one of 
the diverse subordinate congresses, closed with an 
appropriate summing up and forecast of results, 
from which we select these characteristic passages: 

u The influence which this congress of the relig- 
ions of the world will exert on the peace and the 
prosperity of the world is beyond the power of 
human language to describe; for this influence, 
borne by those who have attended the sessions of 
the Parliament of Religions to all parts of the world, 
will affect in some important degree all races of 
men, all forms of religion, and even all governments 
and social institutions. 

" The results of this influence will not soon be 
apparent in external changes, but will manifest 
themselves in thought, feeling, expression, and the 
deeds of charity. Creeds and institutions may long 
remain unchanged in form, but a new spirit of 
light and peace will pervade them, for this congress 
of the world's religions is the most marvelous 
evidence yet given of the approaching fulfillment of 
the apocalyptic prophecy, ( Behold ! I make all 
things new.' 

"And now farewell. A thousand congratula- 
tions and thanks for the cooperation and aid of all 
who have contributed to the glorious results which 
we celebrate this night. Henceforth the religions 
of the w^oiid will make war, not on each other, but 
on the giant evils that afflict mankind. Henceforth 



324 world's religious congresses. 

let all throughout the world who worship God and 

love their fellow-men join in the anthem of the 

angels : 

"Glory to God in the highest! 
Peace on earth, good will among men!" 



CHAPTER VII. 

WHAT WILL BE THE RESULT? 

64 rTIHE world's congresses of 1893 have advanced 
1 the thought of the world fifty years." 

"These congresses will exercise a power- 
ful influence on mankind for centuries to come. ' ' 

' ' The Parliament of Religions is the most wonder- 
ful event since the time of Christ." 

' ' The results of these congresses seem likely to 
be too vast and far-reaching to be easily specified." 

So have able and competent judges passed upon 
the merits of these meetings. It is to be hoped that 
the proceedings, from first to last of the whole 
exhibit of the thought of the times, of which it has 
been said, "It marks a new era in literature by 
its wealth of thought and felicity of expression 
gathered from all parts of the world, ' ' may be pub- 
lished by the United States Government and placed 
in the libraries of the world. Then results will take 
care of themselves. 

But of this movement in the religious world 
especially, which has attracted such wide-spread 
attention, many are asking, "Whence comes it? 
What does it mean?" No one has given any 
better account of causes than its originator, who 
refers it to "the New Age." Speaking to the 
Columbian Catholic Congress, in an address grate- 

(325) 



326 world's religious congresses. 

ful to earnest Catholics, and instructive to all fair- 
minded men, President Bonney said of the spirit of 
the age: 

* ' Descended from the Sun of Righteousness this 
spirit of progress is filling the whole earth with its 
splendor and beauty, its warmth and vivifying 
power, and making the old things of truth and 
justice new in meaning, strength, and energy to 
execute God's will for the welfare of man." 

After rehearsing some of the evidences of prog- 
ress in Catholic deliverances and decisions, and 
among Protestants on the other hand, he says of 
the meaning of these changes: "Blind indeed 
must be the eyes that can not see in these events 
the quickened march of the ages of human progress 
toward the fulfillment of the divine prophecy of one 
fold and one shepherd, when all forms of gov- 
ernment shall be one in liberty and justice, and all 
forms of faith and worship one in charity and 
human service." 

There are many who will not see it so. There are 
some Catholics who can conceive of one fold only 
as Protestants and heathen are gathered into the 
allegiance of Rome, and there are some Protestants 
who would not enter a fold which should include 
Catholics without the most solemn subscription to 
their own catechism of faith and to their ecclesias- 
tical polity. There are some, perhaps there are 
many, who, so far from rejoicing that the heathen 
give evidence of a real religion, are so little confi- 
dent of Christian truth and triumph that they 
greatly fear the effect of this comparison and 



WHAT WILL BE THE RESULT.? 327 

friendly interchange. The religious press reflects 
all these prejudices, doubts, and fears. It must be 
admitted that bigotry is not dead, and that one 
love-feast is not the millenium. The old-line theo- 
logians and ecclesiastical managers, who took little 
part in the congresses, look with distrust upon the 
movement. They recognize that an important event 
has occurred, but seem uncertain as to results, and 
hesitating as to the attitude they ought to assume 
toward it. On the other hand, it is obvious that the 
great body of worshiping and working Christian 
people are much impressed, and expectant of good 
results; though just what permanent results and 
healthful movements are to follow they have not 
clearly defined. 

One thing is clear, namely, that there is a new 
spirit in Christendom, a spirit not very generally 
or generously adopted by religious leaders, perhaps, 
but strong enough to bring into conspicuous cooper- 
ation a few broad and able men, from among Catho- 
lics and Protestants, and representing both orthodox 
and liberal views, and fro so far dominate opposition 
and quiet distrust and stimulate generous impulses 
as to issue in this universal conference. A few years 
ago, these men could not have worked together for 
three years to a common end; could not have 
issued the call in the name of Christendom with- 
out a clamor of protest that would have dis- 
counted its validity; could not have conducted 
a programme covering three sessions a day for 
seventeen days without getting into disgraceful 
conflicts and humiliating displays of bad feeling. 



328 world's religious congresses. 

There is a new spirit in Christendom, not only of 
toleration and good feeling, but of faith in the 
divine care for all men, of respect for the 'liberty 
of willing and thinking 5 which belongs to all men 
of divine gift and must be regarded in all efforts to 
help and benefit one another. There is in this new 
spirit, moreover, less concern about the form of 
belief than about the fruit it bears; a disposition to 
judge its substance and quality by the life it con- 
fers rather than by the form of its statement; a con- 
viction that the true principle of unity is love and 
not faith, fidelity in life to what a man understands 
to be the will of God and not uniformity of confes- 
sion. Where this bond of charity, the common 
possession of an inward acknowledgment and liv- 
ing loyalty to what one believes to be of the divine, 
exists, matters of faith are subjects of reasonable 
conference and instruction among brethren, the 
wise helping the less wise and pointing out errors, 
not to compel, but to show a better way of life. 
The recognition of this true bond of brotherly love, 
the fellowship of those who are seeking to do the 
will of God, is not by any means an indifference to 
the comparative value of beliefs, or to the distinc- 
tions of truth and error, but a new estimate of the 
end of all right belief, which is to guide the life into 
harmony and union with God. It must be called a 
new spirit, rather than a defined doctrine, because 
it has come in like the vernal influences of sun and 
wind, and is operative rather as an impulse than as 
a definite purpose. But it has come into Christen- 
dom, and has been met and sweetly reciprocated by 



WHAT WILL BE THE KESTJLT 1 329 

the representatives of the n on -Christian faiths. It 
is new and it spreads. However few relatively to 
the whole body the representatives of Christian 
churches who participated in the parliament, it is 
manifest that in this spirit they feel the support of 
a large following, and, as was often said, of an inspi- 
ration from above. Whatever opposition to this 
spirit there may be, it is overawed, and cautious in 
expression. Whatever doubt and criticism of the 
spirit in Christendom was shown by oriental relig- 
ionists, was criticism of a spirit formerly and else- 
where manifest, not a doubt of the genuineness of 
this spirit of brotherhood and help fulness in the 
parliament. This new spirit has come to stay. 
Those who like it may rejoice in it; those who do 
not may adjust themselves to it, as to the spirit of 
the age, which is beyond their control. 

It seems likely that a second result of these con- 
gresses, and one inseparable from the new spirit 
they have exhibited, will be a change in the method, 
and perhaps in the message, of Christian mission- 
aries. Intimations have come back recently from 
the missionaries in many lands that the natives do 
not so much reject the Christianity of the gospel 
in the Lord's words and works, as the sectarian 
dogmas and the attempt to impose sectarian 
organization and control upon native Christians. 
With the new spirit of brotherhood for all who are 
faithful to their best, and recognition of the great 
value of the non- Christian faiths to those who are 
loyal to their teachings, the motive of missions 
must become more helpful, and the methods more 



330 world's religious congresses. 

accommodated to native ideas and conditions. 
Some are fearing that the effect of the congresses 
will be to discourage missions, at least temporarily; 
that, from an idea that they are not needed, funds 
will be cut off, and from a false hope of salvation 
for all the motive of missions will be destroyed. 
This may be true to some extent with respect to cer- 
tain missionary methods, and the appeal of certain 
societies committed to them; but it is more likely 
that the desire to carry the fuller light of the gospel 
to those who are doing their best to please God, but 
are ignorant and in error, will prove in the long 
run a stronger motive and a richer enthusiasm than 
the fear of their damnation or the desire of secta- 
rian triumphs have ever furnished. 

The gentle Dharmapala was not by any means 
free from prejudice, but his prejudice was not 
directed against the gospel of Jesus Christ or the 
preaching of that gospel in the East. Addressing 
Americans, he said: " You are free from the bonds 
of theology and dogma, and I want you seriously to 
consider that the twentieth century evangelization 
is in your hands. I warn you that if you want to 
establish Christianity in the East it can only be done 
in the principles of Christ's love and meekness. 
Let the missionaries study all religions, let them 
be types of meekness and lowliness, and they will 
find a welcome in all lands." The Rev. George T. 
Candlin, missionary in China, said, "The meaning 
of Christianity from a missionary point of view is 
infinite desire to give and willingness to receive." 
The Rev. R. E. Hume of India, discussing "How 



WHAT WILL BE THE EESULT ? 331 

we might do our work better," said, "First of all, we 
might some of us know the thoughts of non- Chris- 
tians better. We ought to study their books more 
deeply, more intelligently, more constantly. We 
ought to associate with them in order to knoAv their 
inmost thoughts and feelings and their aspirations 
better than we do." Again he said, "Where we 
find truth we should more cordially and more 
gladly recognize it;" and he warned against the 
jealousy that sometimes is found where there 
ought to be only gladness that God through his 
eternal Word enlighteneth every man that cometh 
into the world. And finally, he said there are 
"phases of Christian doctrine which are put before 
orientals as essential to Christianity which are 
only Western theology," and which instead of 
attracting repel the minds of non- Christian people. 
Such testimony will have an influence, and we may 
expect missionary boards sooner or later to adjust 
themselves to the new spirit in Christendom, and to 
adopt a new motive, and more generous method in 
the field. When the motive shall be to instruct 
the willing-hearted in the simple faith of the 
gospel, and to preach to all repentance for the real 
remission of sins, that all may grow more worthily 
as the children of God, we may expect to see 
methods adopted which will look to the training of 
Christians rather than the making of Presby- 
terians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and so 
forth. The movement has begun, and Mr. Cand- 
lin's conundrum is likely to be meditated: "Given 
a Christendom of religious sects wrangling about 



332 world's religious congresses. 

minor points of doctrine, to produce a universal 
harmony from their united action." 

This leads to the suggestion of another result 
likely to follow these congresses, namely, the recog- 
nition of the need in Christendom of a sound basis 
of faith, simple, self-attesting, and witnessing its 
divine origin. In the papers read before the parlia- 
ment, with a few exceptions, there is wanting that 
apostolic assurance which rests in the confidence of 
divine authority. It is manifest that the authority 
of tradition and of councils is a thing of the past, 
and that the authority of self-evident truth has not 
been found, except, it may be, in such general prop- 
ositions as that God is, and that righteousness alone 
is profitable. The aspiration of reason, in its new 
sense of freedom, is to know who God is, and how 
he operates in the universe which he transcends, and 
such a conception of righteousness as will reconcile 
the providence of God with the recognized laws of 
cause and effect. The reliance of progressive 
thought is just now upon the revelation of God in 
consciousness and to the reason. It is sure, sooner 
or later, to discover the weakness of its own methods. 
The aspiration of the human soul is ever for an ulti- 
mate authority, for the voice of God. And when 
the hope that is centered in the person of Jesus 
Christ, and the thought that is beginning to see in 
him the larger meaning of divine providence, seeks 
to define itself to the oriental religions, and to speak 
with the authority of a divine commission to wealth 
and poverty, to sinners high and low, it is sure to 
feel the need of a more definite, rational, and con- 



WHAT WILL BE THE EESULT? 333 

vincing doctrine than it is yet able to utter. The 
more it tries to find it, the more it will see it can 
not make it, but must find it in the Word that is 
written, in the Scripture that calls itself the Word 
of God; and in that as the vesture of him who is so 
named in apocalyptic vision. When God is seen in 
Christ, and Christ is seen in the written Word 
"opening in all the Scriptures things concerning 
himself," men will search in the Scriptures, and not 
in the processes of their own thought alone, for the 
faith of God — universal, self-attesting, divine. 
The world's religious congresses reveal the need 
of such assured, universal truths, coming down to 
man from above, meeting all needs, applicable to all 
conditions; the need, in short, of a gospel which is 
the gift of God, and not a troublesome tradition of 
the elders, nor yet an immature speculation of the 
newly enfranchised reason, The recognition of the 
need, if it becomes general, will lead to the prayer 
that goes before reception. All history witnesses 
that the providence of God is beforehand with his 
people's need; and that before they ask he provides 
the answer, to be revealed when they shall be ready 
to ask. 

Our human needs are prophecies of gifts. 
They were not planted else. We crave, we have; 
We yearn for and obtain; the soul's deep want 
Prepares the soul, thus thirsting, to receive 
The good it wants. 

Even now the answer is within reach. From 
deliverances before the parliament quoted in this 
brief review, we could construct a series of state- 



334 world's religious congresses. 

merits ecumenical to the practical religious needs 
of all men, if they could separate their attention to 
them from the thought of traditions and from their 
prepossessions. Brought together from different 
addresses, and from those too which had through- 
out the clearest tone of authority grounded in a 
divine conviction, they would read something like 
this: 

That the glorified Lord, Jesus Christ, is God with 
us, from whose presence comes the Holy Spirit to 
protect and empower and save. That the Bible is 
the Lord' s Word, containing within the history and 
symbol and parable of its letter an infinite wisdom 
capable of unfolding itself in the minds of those 
who will live as it teaches. That there is a spirit- 
ual world where we shall live forever, and that our 
state there, in heaven or hell; will be the inevitable 
result of the motives which we make our own by 
choice and life in this world. That the Lord saves 
those who love him and keep his commandments, 
imparting wisdom and power in so far as they shun 
evil and do good in acknowledgment of him; and 
that in very truth Gfod is no respecter of persons. 



Dr. Barrows' Great History 

OF THE 

Parliament of Religions. 

15,000 SETS (30,000 Volumes) 

Sold and. being delivered. 

10,000 SETS (20,000 Volumes) 

To be delivered January 1, 1894. 

IF YOU GET DR. BARROWS' BOOK YOU WILL GET YOUR MONEY'S 
WORTH, HEAPED UP AND RUNNING OVER. 



All the World is Buying Dr. Barrows' Great History of 
the World's Parliament of Religions 

1. Because it is Dr. Barrows 1 book; because it bears throughout the impress 
of the man to whose wonderful ability is due more than to any other the success 
of the Parliament. 

All the World is Buying Dr. Barrows' Book 

2. Because while it does not profess to give in full all the addresses given at 
the Parliament and the Congresses, it does give uuchanged and complete 
those in which the world is especially interested. It gives the oriental papers 
almost without exception in full. It gives sixty pages of Pung Kwang Yu's 
great address on Confucianism, whereas its imitators give but six. It gives all 
of Professor Drummond's powerful paper; its imitators give one-third. It gives 
Canon Freernantle's splendid address on the " Reunion of Christendom ,1 and 
W. T. Stead's unrivaled paper on the " Civic Church," not one word of which ap- 
pears or can appear in the cheap imitations. It gives in its 1624 pages just that 
which the world desires to preserve. 

All the World is Buying Dr. Barrows' Great History 

3. Because in its editing, its scholarship, its typesetting, its printing, its illus- 
trating, its paper, its binding, its convenience of handling it is as thorough and 
creditable a piece of book-work as was ever sent from the press. We have not 
saved money by making it a cheap scrapbook of newspaper reports, or by jam- 
ming into one unwieldy, insecurely bound volume a mass of matter which can be 
made serviceable only when divided into books of smaller bulk. 

All the World is Buying Dr. Barrows' Book 

4. Because its superb illustrations of quaint and curious religious buildings, 
scenes, customs, and its lifelike portraits of the great men and women of the 
religious world, gathered at great expense from every corner of the globe, ren- 
der it worth its price as a religious album alone. 

All the World is Buying Dr. Barrows' Book 

5. Because it seems that all the rest of the world and the provinces are after 
it; because everybody knows that we are running two great printing houses 
night and day to provide the 15,000 sets (30,000 volumes) which have been already 
purchased, and the 10,000 sets (20,000 volumes) which we must deliver before 
January 1st. 

PKRLIHMENT PUBLISHING COMPHNY, 

CHICAGO. 

( A. C. Bartlett. HENRY L. TURNER, President and Treasurer. 

Board of Reference \ Byr^nT" Smith. SCHILLER HOSFORD, Vice-President. 

) O. S. A. Sprague. DWIGHT B. HEARD, Secretary. . 
V Henry L. Turner. 



SIR EDWIN ARNOLD'S GREAT POEM, 

THE 

LIGHT OF ASIA 

WITH FULL AND COMPLETE EXPLANATORY NOTES BY 

MRS. I. L. HAUSER. 
Cloth, $1 .50. HaSf Morocco, $2.50. 



PRESS NOTICES. 

"A task which, when one thinks of it, one must wonder 
was not undertaken before, has been successfully performed 
by Mrs. I. L. Hauser." — Literary World, Boston. 

"These notes will be a real help to most readers." — 
Chronicle, San Francisco. 

"That there will be a wide demand for it, goes without 
saying." — Tidings, Buffalo. 

"Mrs. Hauser has done a great deal to make Arnold's 
Poem duly impressive and understandable." — Interior, 
Chicago. 

" 'The Light of Asia' has just been published by Rand, 
McNally & Co., Chicago, in a luxurious form, with notes. 
This poem of Sir Edwin Arnold, which made its author's 
reputation, will be widely read in this edition. The typo- 
graphical make-up is superb." — News, Philadelphia. 

"These notes, which explain the meaning of terms not 
otherwise intelligible, add much to the interest of the 
reader. Mrs. Hauser's long residence in India has enabled 
her to illuminate many of those half hidden suggestions and 
2ocal allusions the effect of which would otherwise be lost." 
— Advaitce, Chicago. 

For Sale at all Booksellers' and News Stands. 



Send for complete catalogue. 

Rand, McNally & Co., 

CHICAGO AND NEW YORK. 



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All trains of all the Elevated 
Systems in the city now run 
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AND ALL STOP AT THE . 

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CHICAGO. 

When answering this advertisement please mention Globe Library. 




061 20W* 

The LATEST 

ACKNOWLEDGED 

STANDARD MANUAL 

FOR 

Presidents, Secretaries, 

DIRECTORS, CHAIRMEN, 

Tfcaii rnr-irm~ officers, 

And everyone in anyway connected 
-with public life or corporate bodies 

IS 

Reed's Rules 



BY 

THE HON. THOMAS B. REED, 

Speaker of the 

House of Representatives, 

"I commend the book most highly." 

WILLIAM McKINLEY, 

President of the United States. 

"Reasonable, right, and rigid." 

J. STERLING MORTON, 

Ex- Secretary of Agriculture. 

CLOTH, .75 CENT S, 
LEATHER, $1.25. 



RAND, McNALLY & CO., Publishers, 
CHICAGO. 



i 



